


Abyssus Abyssum Invocat

by ArtemisRayne



Series: The Hands of Time [2]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: AU after 1x10, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, F/M, Sequel, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2017-12-25 23:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 50,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRayne/pseuds/ArtemisRayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*Sequel to Beneath the Sandglass* </p><p>Four corpses, four locations, four means of murder, and absolutely no suspects or evidence. It's just another day on the job for the Haven Police Department. </p><p>When bodies start cropping up all over Haven with no connections and no physical evidence, Audrey and Nathan, already stressed by the strange tension in their relationship, find themselves stretched to their wit's end to beat the Troubles. Could these mysterious deaths all be caused by phantoms? Or is it a frightening new epidemic sweeping through town? Either way, they need to solve the case and fast, because the death count is rising and the hands are closing in on their little town...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Holiday Drink

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Beneath the Sandglass](https://archiveofourown.org/works/706464) by [ArtemisRayne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRayne/pseuds/ArtemisRayne). 



> The long (long, long, very long) awaited sequel to "Beneath the Sandglass." I'm not going to say that it's 100% necessary to have read that one first, but it's definitely at least 99.9% necessary. Also, I really just want you to read it because I'm proud of it.
> 
> This series is AU as of 1x10.
> 
> Oh, and the title is Latin and can be loosely translated to mean "Hell begets hell." It's relevant, I promise.

Bart Keller leant against the porch rail and took a deep drag on his cigarette. Winter was coming fast and he wrapped his free arm around his torso to stave off the bitter cold. He would definitely have to remember his coat when coming out to smoke from now on.

With a heavy sigh, Bart lifted his cigarette and took another drag. His neighbours across the street had already strung multi-coloured fairy lights around their windows, twinkling in the darkness. Bart snorted, shaking his head. Idiots. Thanksgiving was tomorrow and those stupid morons had put up those lights two weeks ago. Who'd want to prolong the holiday nightmare any longer than they had to?

Smoke streamed from his nostrils as he exhaled. Bart had just stuck the cigarette between his lips again when the front door opened behind him. He pretended not to hear it even though it creaked loudly. Damn it, he'd forgotten to grease those hinges. Just another thing for Judith to nag him about. "Bart, you coming to bed?" Judith asked.

"Hmm?" Bart asked, feigning confusion. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw his wife standing in the doorway in her nightgown, a bathrobe hanging open over her shoulders. "Oh, yeah, gimme a sec. Just needed some fresh air."

"Alright, honey," Judith said. She turned to head back into the house and then paused and frowned up at the door. "And honey, could you remember to grease these hinges in the morning?"

"Yeah, yeah, got it," Bart said dismissively. He turned his back on her again and went back to his cigarette, which was burning close to the filter. Judith hesitated, like she wanted to say more, but then she just shut the door behind her. Bart rolled his eyes and propped his elbows on the porch rail.

How had he become this guy? He always thought he was going to be so much more but no, his life had dissolved into this domestic nightmare. His days consisted of mind-numbing desk work, getting nagged to do housework by his wife, and getting ignored by his ungrateful kids. And now he couldn't even enjoy a fucking smoke in peace.

Bart flicked the cigarette butt out into the garden and watched it disappear into the snow. He promptly pulled another from the box in his pocket and lit up. The tobacco left a satisfying burn in his throat as he inhaled. When had his life gone to complete shit? He was gonna go places. He was gonna leave this stupid backwater town behind and do bigger and better things. He wasn't supposed to be sitting at home entertaining his crabby ass in-laws all week.

To hell with that. Bart started down the pavement, one hand clutching his cigarette and the other tucked into the pocket of his jeans. He needed a drink and he needed it bad. Judith had gotten rid of all the alcohol in the house. Her crazy mum was some sort of recovering alcoholic and couldn't be around the stuff, so the rest of them had to suffer for it. She wouldn't even let him keep a couple cheap Buds in the fridge in the garage. So he was going to go enjoy himself somewhere else, where folks weren't going to nag away the last few pleasures in life.

The lights were still on at the Rust Bucket and Bart tossed his cigarette before he shoved through the door, grateful as the heating swept over him. There weren't many people there, mostly just the local barflies and a tipsy young woman with a boy who was most definitely going to score. Bart gave the kid an approving nod - the woman was smoking hot, after all - and then took a seat at the bar.

"Scotch on the rocks, Otis," Bart said. "Triple."

"In-laws?" Otis asked when he set the drink down on the counter. Bart gave him a significant look. "Yeah, that's what I thought." With that Otis left him alone, only coming back to refill his glass when it emptied. Bart basked in the pleasant warmth that was a combination of central heating and alcohol. Yes, this was certainly better than being at home.

Bart stood up and Otis asked, "Leavin' already?"

"Nah," Bart said. He shook his head and then clutched the bar as the room wavered slightly. "Gotta piss." With that, he set off for the restrooms tucked into the far corner of the bar. The fluorescent lighting made him squint but he walked up to the nearest urinal and unzipped. When he had finished, he turned to the sink and stuck his hands under the chipped faucets. He glanced in the mirror and something caught his eye. Was that-?

Bart's eyes widened in shock and horror. He spun around and a split-second later a pair of hands closed around his throat. He sputtered and tried to claw the hands away, but nothing he did could break the grip. The world went hazy. His vision went black. 

Bart Keller collapsed in a heap on the cold bathroom floor.


	2. A Sour Wake-Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Guys, the day is finally here! Squee!
> 
> On that note, please no season 4 spoilers in the reviews, not only for the benefit of others who might read them but also because I won't be able to watch the episodes until the day after (stupid school) and I'd really appreciate not having it ruined.
> 
> And I forgot to mention last chapter, this story is overall un-beta'd. The first three or four chapters were beta'd by the lovely and darling Faith_Chan (miss you, love!) well over a year ago when I had first started writing this, but there've been some changes since then and I've bound to have mucked it up.

_"Parker!"_

_Audrey pounded against the sheet of thick glass separating her from Nathan. On the other side, his hands were flat against the glass as the flood of white filled up passed his ankles and towards his knees. Panicked, Audrey threw her shoulder against the glass but it didn't do anything, no matter how many times she tried. When she finally gave up and looked through the glass again, Nathan was buried to the waist._

_"Parker, the sand!" Nathan yelled, beating his fists against the glass. Audrey looked up at the enormous sandglass in horror, watching the white filter down into the lower bulb where Nathan was trapped. "Parker!"_

_"Hold on!" Audrey shouted back. She reached for her sidearm but the holster was empty. "No!" she shrieked, fumbling for her gun but not finding it. "No!" She looked up and Nathan was struggling to keep his head above the rising waves of white sand. "No, Nathan!"_

_"Audrey!" Nathan gasped out before the sand slid down and his face vanished. All she could see was his hand, extended above the white and reaching for her. Hopeful. Desperate. If she could just reach him, she could save him. She clawed at the glass but she couldn't get to him. His wrist was sinking beneath the sand, then his palm._

_"Nathan!" she screamed as his fingers disappeared into the white and he was gone. "Nathan!"_

_BUZZ!_

The monotone hum jerked Audrey from her sleep and she bolted upright in bed, panting. After a second to get her bearings – it was just a dream, just  _another_  damn dream – she realised it was her mobile vibrating on the nightstand that had woken her up. Confused, she glanced at the bedside clock. Four-eleven. Audrey let out an irritated growl and snatched up the phone.

"Parker," she answered curtly, burrowing herself back down beneath the covers to stave off the cold air.

"Happy Thanksgiving."

Audrey blinked and frowned at the phone because she knew that voice. What she didn't know was why in the hell he was calling her at four in the morning to wish her Happy Thanksgiving. "Nathan, please tell me that is not why you woke me up at such an ungodly hour," Audrey pleaded into the phone, turning to bury her face in her pillow. "Because if so, I will hit you.  _Hard_."

Nathan chuckled wryly. "I don't have a death wish," he said, by way of an answer. "No, if you ever remembered to take your radio home you'd know we've got a case. Dead body at the Bucket."

Audrey groaned again but sat up, keeping the blankets wrapped around her shoulders. "Alright, I'm up," she grumbled. "Did it snow again last night?"

"Yeah, I'll be there in fifteen," Nathan said. Audrey murmured her agreement and hung up. He'd had to come pick her up almost every day for the last month. Her rental car was just not built for driving around in the snow. She'd found that out the hard way after the first storm of the season when she slid off the road and got wedged in a snow bank. It was safer to just rely on Nathan and his four-wheel drive.

Audrey gave herself five more minutes, both to enjoy the warmth of her bed and to clear her mind. It had been just over two months since the Sandglass case and she still hadn't been able to make the nightmares go away. Nearly losing Nathan had shaken her a lot more than she was ready to admit. Not to mention it had brought to life a whole array of other emotions involving her partner that she definitely wasn't prepared to deal with just yet.

Shaking her head, she took a deep breath and then ran for the closet. Even with the radiator on, it was chilly in the Bed and Breakfast, and her bare feet were protesting against the frigid hardwood. She hurried through getting dressed, bouncing on the balls of her feet to keep from getting cold. She had just combed her hair back into a bun when she heard the rumble of Nathan's truck pulling into the car park. Audrey forced up the zip on her coat as she jogged out and clambered into the cab of the truck.

"Brought coffee," Nathan said and gestured to the two travel Thermoses in the cup holder.

"Oh thank God, I love you," Audrey said gratefully, grabbing one of the mugs and taking a swallow. It was only when she heard Nathan give an awkward laugh that she realised what she'd said. "I meant the coffee," she said hastily.

"Course you did," Nathan agreed, just as quick. Audrey turned her attention back to the coffee so she could avoid his eyes and he backed them out onto the road. She alternated between rubbing her fingers together and cradling the Thermos in her palms to keep her hands warm, making a mental note that she needed to get a pair of gloves before she lost fingers.

Nathan cast a sideways smirk at the action and said, "Cold? It's just a little snow."

"This is most definitely not just a  _little_ snow," Audrey argued, grateful for the return to casual conversation.

"Is for Maine," Nathan said. "You moved here from Boston, haven't you ever seen winter before?"

"Not in a while," Audrey admitted. "I spent most of last winter in Orlando. Oddly enough, it doesn't exactly snow down there."

Nathan nodded and left her to her coffee, which she drank down eagerly. She wasn't a morning person like Nathan, especially since her nightmares made it feel like she hadn't actually gotten any rest. He seemed content to just focus on his driving and Audrey took the chance to collect herself as they rode the rest of the way to the Rust Bucket in silence.

The bar was more alive than the detectives usually saw it at such an early hour of the morning. Audrey was almost ashamed to admit just how many times she'd been by the bar so early but, in all honesty, it wasn't like the Troubles ran on a typical nine-to-five schedule. Besides the barman's rusting Cadillac, there was a police cruiser and an ambulance parked in the lot. Nathan pulled the truck as close as he could get to the kerb without getting stuck in the snow drifts left behind by the ploughs.

Audrey kept close behind Nathan as they tromped up to the bar, both because his tall frame blocked the wind and so she could step in his footprints. She was wearing her thick, fur-lined boots, but her toes were still cold and she didn't want to add wet to that list. It was a welcome relief to shut the door behind them inside of the Rust Bucket.

Otis, the elderly and irritable barman, was standing at the counter being interrogated by Officer Seddal and the new patrol recruit, a fresh-from-school and all-too-eager boy named Marshall. If Audrey was honest with herself, she wasn't even sure if Marshall was his first name or last. There were two EMTs hovering in the doorway of the restrooms in the back corner of the room. The only other occupant was Jed Johnson, the local barfly, who currently appeared to be passed out in one of the booths.

With a short jerk of his head, Seddal directed them toward the restrooms. Nathan led the way, Audrey still a half-step behind him. When they'd walked over, the older of the two EMTs greeted them with a weak smile. "Happy Holidays, folks," he said dryly.

"What you have for us?" Nathan asked, looking past the man into the bathroom. It looked exactly like a typical restroom except for the medical tarp covered body in the middle of the tiled floor.

"Bart Keller, forty-three," the EMT said. "According to Otis, he came in, had some drinks, went into the bathroom, and never came back out."

"So what, guy has too many drinks, falls, hits his head," Audrey said. "Not exactly an uncommon thing."

"Yeah, that's what we thought at first, too," the EMT said. "But then we saw this." He knelt down beside the body and drew back the cloth. The middle-aged man's face was already starting to grey with death and that made the violet bruises wreathed around his neck stand out even bolder.

"Strangled?" Nathan asked in surprise. He knelt down opposite the EMT and held one of his hands over the man's neck, visually comparing the bruises. "They definitely look like hand prints."

"Oh I'm about ninety-nine percent positive they are hand prints," the EMT said. When Nathan and Audrey both raised an eyebrow, he added, "Well if this wasn't Haven, I'd be a hundred. But it is, so it's always safer to give myself some wiggle room."

Neither of the detectives could dispute that logic. Audrey surveyed the restroom curiously. "Well there's only one way into this room," she said. "That window is way too small for anyone but maybe a cat to get through." She paused and glanced down at the body. "And he definitely wasn't strangled by a cat. So, whoever it was must have had to come in through the door. Which means someone out there would've seen him."

"Good luck getting anything from Otis," the EMT said and rolled his eyes. "Bob's been grilling him for the last half-hour and he's not exactly being helpful. Mostly just telling us to get out. I think someone's missed out on his beauty sleep, if you know what I mean."

Nathan gave a nod of acknowledgement. "Alright, thanks, Joe. Let us know what you get when you're done with the autopsy." With that, they left the EMTs to their business and went back out into the barroom. Seddal looked almost relieved when they came over and Nathan signalled that he could leave.

"When you gonna get that corpse outta my bar?" Otis asked immediately. "I need to get this place ready for my morning rush and I can't do that with a dead body rottin' on my floor."

"Morning rush?" Audrey asked with a raised eyebrow. "You get that busy in the mornings?"

"Do on holidays like Thanksgiving," Otis answered. "Get folks in here hiding out from the families. Don't rightly blame 'em, either."

"Well, the sooner you tell us what we want to know, the sooner we can get out of your way," Nathan said.

Otis eyed them suspiciously for a minute and then nodded. "Bart came in just a bit after midnight. Ordered his usual, and then just sat there and drank. Didn't say nothing to me, and I didn't say nothing to him. Little later - must've been about two - he went into the bathroom. I was getting ready to close up at three when I noticed he hadn't come back, so I went to check on him. Wouldn't be the first time someone passed out in the bathroom. Found him dead as a doornail in the middle of the floor, and that's when I called you folks. End of story."

"Did anyone else go in there with him?" Audrey asked. "Or did you see anyone acting strangely?"

"There were only three people 'sides him in here last night; this young kid and his drunk girlfriend, and Jed over there," Otis said. "The kid and his girl left not long after Bart showed up, and Jed, well, he passed out around one. No one else came in and no one else went out."

Audrey nodded thoughtfully. "Okay, I think that's all we need from you right now," she said. "If we have more questions we'll drop by."

"This mean you're getting that body out of my place?" Otis asked gruffly.

"We're working on it, fast as we can," Audrey said as diplomatically as she could before sunrise. Otis seemed less than pleased with the answer, but he didn't argue as he turned his back on them to polish the already gleaming counter. Accepting the dismissal, Nathan and Audrey checked one last time that the scene was under control and then went back out to the truck.

"So, what you make of that?" Nathan asked as he started up the engine to get the heaters running.

"Well, we've got a guy who was murdered by a mysterious strangler who can either shrink themselves down to fit through a tiny window, turn invisible, or walk through walls," Audrey said. "That's the only way I can think of that someone managed to get into that room, throttle Keller, and get back out without anyone knowing." She took a sip from her coffee and looked out the windscreen thoughtfully. "Either that or someone is lying to us."

Nathan gave a wry chuckle. "I like how that's the last possibility you consider," he said, shaking his head. "Well, there's not much more we can do until the autopsy comes in, and the M.E. won't be in the lab before nine." They both glanced at the clock set in the dashboard. Five-twenty-six a.m. "You want me to drop you off so you can catch another hour or two of sleep?"

Audrey traced a finger around the rim of her coffee cup. "I'm not going to be able to get back to sleep now," she finally admitted. "Might as well just stay up. I should probably shower and make some attempt to look decent, though."

"Probably not a bad idea," Nathan said. "If you want, you can shower at my place and I'll make some breakfast." He hesitated when it occurred to him just how that sounded. "I mean, it'll save me the hassle of having to drive back up to the B&B to pick you up again. Driving up Cleary Street isn't fun, even in my truck."

"Okay," Audrey said, even though she didn't sound entirely confident in the idea. "Yeah, that's a good plan." Nathan nodded and pulled the truck out onto the road again, driving them toward his house. They sat in the quiet, neither of them really concentrating on what was going on. Audrey drank her coffee slowly, staring out of the window.

There was the strange awkwardness rearing its ugly head again. They were doing a good job of ignoring it, but that didn't change the fact that it was there. Ever since the Sandglass case, things had been -  _different_. They were still friends and partners, and nothing interfered with their work, but somehow the dynamic had shifted.

Whatever it was, they were balanced on the edge of something big.

The brakes creaked in the cold as Nathan parked the truck in his driveway. Audrey clambered out and followed Nathan up the path to his front door, pausing on the front step to kick some of the snow from her boots. Inside, she stripped off her coat and Nathan took it from her to hang it on the hooks by the door. His fingers brushed hers as he did and he flinched before looking at her curiously.

"Your hands are cold," he said, sounding bemused by the idea.

Audrey gave a sarcastic smile and then busied her hands with the laces of her boots. "Yeah, well, that's what happens when you don't have gloves," she said. Even though it had been more than two months, she was still having difficulty adjusting to the fact that Nathan could feel her. He worked hard to not let it become weird but there were still the little moments like this when the smallest touches made his eyes widen and a narrow smile steal across his face. It wasn't the way the contact affected her partner that made her uncomfortable, though; it was the way it affected her.

"You should really get a pair of gloves," Nathan said. "It's only going to get colder. By the end of December, being out at night without gloves will get you frostbite." They lingered there for another moment, then Nathan abruptly cleared his throat. "Anyway, I'm going to go start breakfast," he said. "The bathroom's down at the end of the hall, and there's towels in the cupboard under the sink."

"Right, thanks," Audrey said. She slipped past Nathan and walked down the hall. Inside of the bathroom, she locked the door and dug out one of the fluffy towels beneath the sink. For someone who couldn't feel, he had a good taste in linens. Audrey shook her head to clear it, then turned on the shower before stripping down and climbing under the warm spray.

No matter how scattered her thoughts were, they had a murder to solve and she needed to keep her head on straight.


	3. Breakfast and Banter

Nathan watched Audrey disappear down the hallway and then headed into the kitchen to start on breakfast. He had pulled out the milk and eggs when the sound of running water from down the hall made him pause. _The shower_. He struggled to keep his mind from wandering at the realisation that Audrey was in his shower. That was not a place he needed his mind right now. He couldn't help it if those sorts of images cropped up in his dreams but he couldn't afford to be thinking about those things when he was supposed to be working.

With a groan, Nathan leant against the counter and looked down at his hands. Just a few minutes ago he had felt his fingertips. His hand had brushed against Audrey's as he'd taken her coat and the nerves in his fingers had flared into life, telling him that her skin was soft and cold like ice. He had shivered in surprise and hadn't been able to stop the observation coming from his mouth. Audrey had been accepting of the fact that he could feel her, adapting to the truth a lot faster than he had for sure, and it made him feel better that he wasn't keeping a secret from her.

No, what really had him worried was how much he craved her touch, and not just because he could feel her.

A dull click and rasping brought Nathan back to reality and he looked down at his feet. Delilah, the little old dog that he had rescued from a victim's house, sat down on his feet and looked up at him hopefully. Nathan smiled and reached down to scratch her ears before going back to cooking. He was just starting to lay out dishes on the counter island when the shower turned off, and a few minutes later Audrey came into the room with her hair still hanging in damp ringlets around her shoulders.

"Let me guess; pancakes?" Audrey asked with a smirk, glancing at the table.

"And eggs," Nathan said as he set the frying pan down. "I do know how to change things up a little."

Audrey chuckled and slid onto one of the stools, grabbing the mug of coffee beside her plate. "Wow. You, of all people, advocating changes. It's some sort of miracle," she teased.

"Be nice or I'll eat all this myself," Nathan warned even as he dished a pancake and a fried egg onto her plate. He smirked and slipped into the seat across from her. Audrey put a piece of pancake into her mouth and made a small hum.

"Not bad, Wuornos," she said appreciatively.

"Not as good as Muriel's," Nathan said with a shrug. "Haven't quite figured out her recipe yet and she won't tell me her secret. Something about old family recipes, and how sharing them jinxes it."

"Don't worry, detective, I'm sure you'll figure it out," Audrey said and grinned. "You always do."

Nathan returned the smile and then tucked into his breakfast. Every few minutes he'd drop a piece of egg to the floor where Delilah would quickly snap it up. After the third time, Audrey gave a small laugh and muttered something that sounded like, "spoilt." Nathan didn't dignify that with a response.

"So," Nathan started abruptly, trying and failing miserably at sounding off-hand, "you got any plans for the day?"

"Besides working, no," Audrey said, arching an eyebrow at him suspiciously. "Why?"

"Well, it's Thanksgiving," Nathan pointed out.

Audrey's smile was a little more forced. "Not too familiar with that one," she said with a shallow shrug. Nathan wanted to kick himself. No, actually, he wanted her to kick him because then it would actually hurt. Of course she wouldn't be doing anything for Thanksgiving. That was a holiday for families and distant relatives you only ever saw once a year. Audrey didn't have a family. She had assimilated so well into Haven that sometimes he forgot she wasn't a local. "What about you?" she asked, obviously trying to keep the conversation light-hearted. "You going to cut a turkey with the Chief?"

Nathan gave her a deadpan stare in response, making her laugh into her coffee. "No, we usually just work," he said. "Besides, I'm not a big fan of stuffing."

"Duly noted," Audrey said. They finished their breakfasts quietly, and then Nathan rinsed their dishes and stashed them away in the dishwasher.

"Well I'm going to hurry and wash up, and then we can head into the station," Nathan said. "Go ahead and make yourself at home." When Audrey nodded, he turned and went into his bedroom, and then through to the adjoining bathroom. He turned on the shower and stuck the thermometer beneath the spray, then leant on the counter to wait for it to reach a good temperature.

This thing between he and Audrey was starting to get frustrating. It seemed like all of the easy banter and playfulness they used to share was tainted now, like he was constantly afraid of saying anything to make things even more strained. It was all very counter-productive. He knew that he felt something more than just simple friendship for Audrey. He wouldn't go so far yet as to call it love, but there was definitely some sort of connection. What he didn't know were  _her_ feelings.

Which was really the sticking pin in the whole mess, wasn't it? He didn't dare act on his feelings without knowing that they would be reciprocated. Their friendship and partnership were too important to him, and he couldn't lose that over a vague possibility. He had few enough people in his life that he could trust, and losing her would be the final nail in the coffin. But how could he know what she felt? Without asking and making a fool of himself, anyway?

The thermometer in the shower chirped loudly and startled him from his thoughts. He undressed and climbed under the spray, blinking water from his eyes as he focused on cleaning himself. Now wasn't the time to stress about his quasi-relationship-thing with Audrey. There was a dead body and what looked like it would probably turn out to be a Troubled murderer on the loose. Tension and confusion would have to wait.

When he'd dressed and gone back out into the main part of the house, it was to find Audrey perusing the bookshelf in the living room. "Find anything interesting?" he asked.

Audrey spun around, looking like a kid caught with her hand in a cookie jar, and he realised why. The book she held open in her hands was a photo album. "Sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't - I wasn't snooping, I just -"

"Relax, Parker," Nathan said with a small smile. "It wouldn't be in the living room if it was confidential." He walked over, instinctively sidestepping around Delilah, and peered over her shoulder at the open page to see what she'd been looking at. It was an old, time-worn photograph of two people; a beautiful young woman with short blonde hair and a bright smile, her arms around a little boy with missing front teeth and limbs far too long for his body.

"Is that your mom?" Audrey asked quietly.

"Yeah," Nathan said, staring at the picture thoughtfully. It had been ages since he'd looked through his old albums. He generally tried to avoid thinking about those days.

"She's beautiful," Audrey said. "You guys look really happy."

Nathan smiled and nodded, and then cleared his throat awkwardly. "We should probably get to the station," he said. "Start on that paperwork before the M.E. calls." 

* * *

"Heard you two got yourself a murder." Nathan glanced up as The Chief leant against the doorframe and folded his arms over his chest. "Got any idea how he died?"

"It all points to strangulation right now," Audrey answered.

"Points to?" The Chief asked, arching an eyebrow.

"We're keeping our options open, just in case," Audrey explained pointedly, "but we're fairly positive."

The Chief nodded in understanding. "Any suspects?"

"No," Nathan said shortly.

"That part's still being a bit elusive," Audrey cut in as the men exchanged curt glances. "We're still waiting on the official report to come back from the M.E. before we jump to any conclusions."

The Chief grunted and nodded again. "Well, soon's you get that back, you go see Bart's wife and let her know what's happened," he said. "Won't do no good for Judith to find out from someone else, 'specially not on a holiday."

Nathan frowned, and Audrey must have been thinking the same thing because she asked, "Wait, you know this guy?"

"Well, yeah," The Chief said in that condescending tone Nathan was all too familiar with. "He's Big Bartie."

"Wait," Nathan said, his eyes widening in surprise, "you mean Big Bartie K?"

"Who?" Audrey asked when The Chief nodded. "Is this one of those weird small town things that everyone knows but me?"

"Big Bartie K, he was the best hockey player to come out of Maine in ages," Nathan explained. "The first athlete from Haven to go pro. Then he ruined his knee in his first year and had to retire. I didn't know he came back to Haven."

"Not long after the accident," The Chief said. "So when you get your facts together, you go pay Judith a visit and let her know what happened, got it?"

"Got it," Audrey chipped in when Nathan scowled. The Chief shot a glance at them both and then walked away, fingering the pocket where he used to keep his cigarettes. When he'd passed out of sight, Audrey glanced over at Nathan and said, "Would it kill you two to play nice once in awhile?"

"Possibly," Nathan said, shrugging, and went back to his paperwork. Across the room, Audrey gave an amused snort and settled into her desk again.

They had only been working for about twenty minutes when the office phone rang and Nathan picked it up. "Haven PD, Detective Wuornos speaking," he said robotically.

"Wuornos, it's Jorgenson in the morgue," was the terse response.

Nathan immediately turned on the speaker setting and gestured for Audrey to come over. "Alright, Jorgenson, what'd you find?"

"It's all pretty straightforward," Gary Jorgenson drawled out. Through the connection, Nathan could hear the sound of him gnawing at a piece of gum and Nathan wrinkled his nose in disgust. He wasn't very fond of the slobbish middle-aged man who had replaced Eleanor Carr, and that displeasure had only grown with time. "He was strangled, simple as that. The injuries to his neck and throat match up with being suffocated by someone of similar height and weight. The only other injuries were some post-mortem bruising on his head from hitting the floor when he went down."

"Did he have any defensive wounds?" Audrey asked. "Any sign of trying to fight off his attacker?"

"There's a little bit of skin beneath his fingernails that didn't match him, so it's a pretty good assumption it came from the attacker," Jorgenson said. There was a loud smack as he popped his chewing gum. "Problem is we don't have anything else to match it up to, so I've got no idea who it came from."

"Anything else useful?" Nathan asked shortly.

"Not really," Jorgenson said unconcernedly. "Blood alcohol level matched up to the story you got from the bartender, no drugs in his system. He was a heavy smoker, lots of lung damage, early stages of emphysema. Probably meant he died fairly quickly. That's about all I've got for now."

"Alright, call if you find anything else," Nathan said and then hung up before the M.E. could respond. Audrey shot him a short, amused smile.

"So it was definitely murder," Audrey said pointedly. "Should we pay a visit to his wife, see if he had any enemies that might have wanted him gone?"

"After you," Nathan said, gesturing toward the doorway as he grabbed his coat. As he followed Audrey back out to the truck, he let out a relieved breath. It was so much easier to function when they had a case to focus on.


	4. Futility to Feast Upon

The Kellers' house was a charming little bungalow not far from the high school, with a large porch and pale green siding. Nathan and Audrey made their way up the icy walk to the front door and Nathan knocked. There was a loud scuffling noise from the other side of the door, muffled voices, and then the door was opened by a teenage boy sporting a scowl and a black eye. When he caught sight of the badge on Nathan's belt he blanched. "Cops?" he asked anxiously. "Oh c'mon, he's okay, you can't arrest me. It wasn't even my idea. Jack started it."

"Whoa, kid, slow down," Audrey said. "What are you talking about?"

The boy paused and frowned again. "Wait, you're not here about the fight at school?" he asked.

"No, we're looking for your mom," Nathan said. "She here?"

"Oh, yeah." The boy turned around and bellowed, "Mom! Door!"

There was more shouting from inside the house and then a woman in a pink bathrobe appeared at the end of the hall. "Tyler, how many times have I told you not to yell in the house?" she said wearily.

The boy shrugged and then pointed out the door. "Cops are here."

"What?" the woman asked, glancing passed the boy. "Oh. Alright. Well, go see if your grandad needs any help." The boy groaned and rolled his eyes but disappeared back into the house. The woman pulled her robe tighter around herself and looked up at them nervously. "Is Bart in some kind of trouble?" she asked. "He never came back to bed last night and he's not answering his phone."

Audrey exchanged a tense glance with Nathan and then cleared her throat. "Mrs Keller, I'm afraid your husband's body was found early this morning," she said as gently as she could. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Oh God." Mrs Keller slumped against the doorframe, a hand over her heart. 

"Did your husband have any enemies?" Audrey pressed, wanting to get the questions finished before the shock wore off. "Anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?"

Mrs Keller shook her head weakly. "What? No, not like that. I mean, he isn't always the nicest guy, he comes across a little rough sometimes. Why? Did someone do this to him?"

"We're just trying to be thorough." Nathan put a hand on Audrey's shoulder and she took the cue. "If you think of anything, call, okay?" she said, passing her a business card. "We'll let you get back to your family." Mrs Keller nodded and went back into the house without another word; Audrey and Nathan walked to the truck.

"I hate having to do that," Audrey said as Nathan started the truck. "I don't mind anything else about the job, but telling the families is awful."

"It gets easier when we catch the bad guy and get them justice," Nathan said and nudged her arm lightly. When she glanced up at him, he gave her a soft almost-smile and she returned it shortly before turning her attention back to the windscreen. "So let's get back to the station and work on that, okay?"

"Sounds good," Audrey agreed and she schooled herself back into cop mode. Solve the case, catch the bad guy. She could do that. At least she could if Nathan would stop staring at her. She glanced over at him and he hastily turned his gaze back to the road.

It was going to be a long day.

* * *

The rest of the day was spent mostly in research and paperwork, trying to find some suspect in Bart Keller's murder. After lunch at the diner, they went by Keller's work to talk to his boss and a few of his co-workers. All of the evidence added up to the same answer that his wife had given them; Bart Keller might have been rough around the edges but he didn't seem to have any enemies.

"Well, that was a waste of time," Audrey grumbled as they climbed back into the Bronco. They had just spent the last hour combing through Keller's cubicle in the hopes of finding some clue but all they'd learned was that he was fond of Rosemary's éclairs and apparently collected memorabilia about his time in the NHL.

"When are these cases ever easy?" Nathan pointed out. Audrey waved a hand dismissively, the other occupied with covering her yawn. Nathan smiled sympathetically and turned the ignition. "It's been a long day, Parker. Why don't we call it a night and start fresh tomorrow?"

"Sounds good," she said gratefully. The four a.m. wake-up call had taken its toll and even though it was barely past five in the evening, she was exhausted. Nathan had hardly shifted the truck into gear when Audrey's phone rang. She checked the caller ID and frowned before answering. "Hey, Duke."

Nathan had hardly shifted the truck into gear when Audrey's phone rang. She checked the caller ID and frowned before answering. "Hey, Duke." In the driver's seat, Nathan rolled his eyes. "What?" Audrey asked into the phone, her frown deepening. "Wait, what happened? I can't understand you. Trouble? What? Okay, yeah, we're on our way."

"What did he do now?" Nathan asked as she slid the phone shut.

"I'm not sure," she answered and shrugged. "He wasn't making much sense."

"Does he ever?" Nathan asked, arching an eyebrow sceptically.

Audrey ignored him, although the corner of her lips quirked up slightly. "He was saying something about trouble at the Gull. I told him we'd come by and check it out."

"Probably got on the wrong side of one of his shady clients again," Nathan said dryly but he obligingly turned the truck onto the road toward the bar.

When they pulled up to the Grey Gull, the parking lot was empty except for Duke's battered Jeep around the corner of the building. The lights inside the bar were on but they couldn't see anyone moving in there. Normally at this time of the evening, the bar was humming with activity.

"Did he close for the holiday?" Audrey asked, a strange chill running up her spine at the quiet.

"Must've," Nathan said, throwing the Bronco into park in the lot. "But then why's he here?"

Feeling anxious, Audrey hopped down out of the truck and instinctively unbuttoned her gun holster. She and Nathan approached the front door of the Gull cautiously and he opened the door. The inside of the bar was vacant and quiet, and the only lights on were the hanging lamps above the bar, as well as one luminous light glowing out of the doorway from the kitchen. In the centre of the room, one of the tables was set with wine glasses and two long, tapered candles, and there were several platters of delicious-smelling food sprinkled across the maroon tablecloth.

"What the-?" Audrey asked in confusion, looking at the table.

A figure was suddenly silhouetted in the doorway of the kitchen and, at the sight of a knife in its hand, Audrey immediately drew her gun.

"Whoa, whoa, easy there!" the figure said and he took another step forward so she could actually see his face. It was Duke, and he was carrying a tray with a small turkey on it, a large carving knife clutched awkwardly in one of his hands as he tried to grip it and the handle of the tray at the same time. "Don't shoot me until I get a chance to set this down, okay Annie Oakley? It took too long to cook it to waste it on the floor."

"What is this?" Audrey asked, her brow furrowing as she slipped her gun back into the holster.

"Oh c'mon, Officer-Agent, I thought you'd recognise dinner when you see it," Duke said with a teasing smirk. He crossed the barroom and set the tray in the middle of the table, and then gestured to the set up with a dramatic flourish.

"I thought you said there was trouble?" she said, but the reality of the situation was starting to sink in and she felt something in her chest warm pleasantly.

"Well, the trouble is that I made this brilliant Thanksgiving dinner and someone needs to eat it," he responded. "And I can't exactly eat all of this by myself. I'll lose my figure."

"You made us Thanksgiving dinner?" she asked in awe.

Duke gestured her over and pulled out a chair, pushing it in as she sat down. "Well, technically I made _you_ dinner. I wasn't expecting you to bring Captain Stoic with you."

Nathan shot him a sarcastic look as he took the chair to the left of Audrey, who just smiled. She knew Duke well enough to know that he was only kidding, and she knew that the two were much better friends than they let on. Duke dropped into the chair on Audrey's other side and then picked up the carving knife with a grin. "So, who wants the dark meat and who wants light?"

That dinner was easily one of the best nights of Audrey's life. Duke was a spectacular cook and he had spared no expense on their little dinner, including breaking out a bottle of his best wine. Nathan and Duke passed the evening trading barbs but they lacked any of their usual bite, and as the night wore on – and the wine slowly emptied – they began sharing stories of their childhood, seemingly aiming to embarrass the other. Audrey was sure she had never laughed so much in her life.

"You would not _believe_ the mess," Duke said earnestly over Audrey's giggles. On the other side of the table, Nathan was attempting to hide his smile behind his wine glass, but Audrey could see the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "I'm serious, there was flour and eggs on the ceiling. The ceiling!"

"I still have idea how it got there," Nathan chimed in.

"And you should've seen Mrs W's face when she came home and saw. I have never seen anyone's eyes bug that far out of their face," Duke added. Audrey didn't miss the way Nathan's smile sank just slightly at the mention of his mother, but Duke didn't notice and barrelled on. "She turned like nine different shades of red and I was sure she was about to give us the telling off of a lifetime. And then she _laughed_."

This caught Audrey off-guard and she looked over in surprise, arching an eyebrow. "She laughed?"

"I'm talking doubled over on the floor, tears in her eyes laughing," Duke said.

"I had never seen her laugh that hard before," Nathan agreed and, although his eyes were tinted with sadness, he was still smiling.

"Not that it kept us out of trouble," Duke finished. "We still had to clean the entire kitchen ourselves, and the Chief was none too happy when he found out. But when is he?"

"Hardly the worst trouble we've been in," Nathan pointed out with a lazy shrug.

Duke grinned. "Nah, for you that would have been when? That time we got caught smoking under the bleachers when we were supposed to be in school? Or when the Chief walked in on you with Nicole Francis?"

Audrey chuckled and Nathan shot him a dour look as his ears turned pink. "Actually, I was arrested in college. Drunk and disorderly. I was at a party and said some choice words to the cop who tried to break it up."

"Nathan Wuornos at a party?" Duke said sarcastically. "Oh, this I gotta see." Nathan's only response was to roll his eyes and take another swallow of wine. "What about you, Audrey?" he asked, turning his focus on her once he'd realised that he wasn't going to get a rise out of Nathan. "What's the worst trouble Officer-Agent Parker's been in?"

"You mean besides getting caught up in your Troubles?" she asked rhetorically. "Well, I did get suspended from work for that week after I punched Jimmy Daley in the face." She caught the satisfied grin that flashed across Nathan's face at the mention. He smiled every time that story was mentioned, although whether it was because Audrey had punched Daley for insulting Nathan or simply because he really didn't like Jimmy, she wasn't sure.

"They should've given you an award for that," Duke said earnestly. "That must've been a mean right hook. I saw what his face looked like when you'd finished with him. Besides, it's not like everyone didn't want to do the same thing themselves."

Nathan smirked. "I think it was more the fact that she pulled a gun on him."

"I thought he was killing you," Audrey said with an unconcerned shrug, despite what she knew were the very serious implications of her statement. _I would kill to save you._ But she didn't regret what she'd done. "And he kept calling me Barbie."

Duke snorted. "Okay, Barbie is off the table then," he said. "In that case, help me with these dishes, Skipper."

"That's not better," she objected. "And why am I doing the dishes?"

"I cooked," Duke said. "Least you can do is help me clean up."

Audrey pretended to be reluctant as she started gathering dishes and hauling them into the kitchen, but really she just wanted to hug him. He'd gone to the effort of throwing her a first proper birthday party – despite the fiasco of the Chameleon, but he couldn't really be blamed for that – and now her first real Thanksgiving as well.

"Thank you," she said a few minutes later when she and Duke were alone in the kitchen. He glanced up from where he was elbows deep in the dishwater and she set the stack of plates on the counter beside him.

"For giving you chores?" he asked flippantly. "No problem, you're welcome to them whenever you want."

"For dinner," she clarified with a smile, even though she was sure he already knew what she meant. "All of this. It was great."

"You're welcome," he said, rinsing off a wine glass and setting it in the drying rack. "But if we're being completely honest," he added and then leant closer, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper, "it wasn't _entirely_ my idea." He tilted his head toward the barroom and through the doorway she could see her partner's back as he wiped down the table where they'd eaten.

"Nathan?" she asked in surprise.

"He called me earlier to say you'd never really had a Thanksgiving, and you had no plans. Asked if I'd do him a favour and maybe bring by a dinner for the three of us – yeah, even said I could join. I told him I'd do him one better."

Audrey beamed and threw her arms around the smuggler's neck, and Duke awkwardly tried to return the hug without getting her wet. "Thanks again," she said when she'd released him.

Duke just smiled and nodded his head toward the other room again, a strange sort of resignation in his eyes. It was a look she had seen once before, that day in the hospital. The day she'd thought she might lose Nathan. She could still clearly remember what he'd said to her in that hospital corridor.

_"You two, you've got something different between you, don't you?"_

She hadn't been able to get those words out of her head since. Was there something 'different' between them? Was there something between them at all? Well, at least that part she knew the answer to; there was clearly _something_. It was just a question of what exactly that something was.

Walking back out into the barroom, she grabbed the end of the tablecloth that Nathan was struggling to fold on his own. He nodded his thanks and they brought the two edges together. As she handed her end to him, their fingers brushed and he twitched slightly. He hid it better the second time and then he folded it once more over his arm before dropping it on the tabletop.

"Thank you," Audrey said, leaning back against the table.

"What for?" he asked, copying her position.

"You don't expect me to believe Duke planned this all on his own," she said jokingly. "And you were a bit too willing to come to the Gull and help when he called. That's not very Nathan-y."

Nathan arched an eyebrow. "Did you just make my name an adjective?"

Smiling, Audrey stood on her toes and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. She felt him tense, heard the smallest intake of breath, and when she dropped back down to her heels there was something like wonder in his gaze. He flexed his hand like he was resisting the urge to reach up and touch his cheek where she'd kissed it. Her heart warmed at being able to give him that, letting him feel again if only for a moment. "Thank you," she said again, more firmly. This time Nathan simply nodded.

"Alright, Audrey, one last custom of Thanksgiving for you," Duke announced, coming into the dining room carrying a stack of take-away containers. "Lots and lots of leftovers. All yours."

"What am I supposed to do with all that food?" she asked. As he set them on the bar, she counted six different containers.

"Eat it, I would imagine," he said, shooting her a teasing look as he rummaged behind the bar for a sack to put the food in. "But it's up to you, really."

"Ha ha," she replied dryly. He smirked as he pushed the loaded bag into her arms.

"Alright, now you two go home so I can lock up and get some sleep," Duke said, shepherding them toward the door. "Tomorrow is the start of Christmas season, which means a lot of humbugs needing stiff drinks."

"Ever the opportunist," Nathan remarked as he held the door for Audrey. She shivered and huddled closer to the boxes of warm food as the winter night air swept around them. It had started snowing at some point and a fine layer of new white powder covered the ground, giving the existing snow a fresh, clean covering.

"It's called being a businessman," Duke corrected him.

Audrey could sense another of their little bickering matches coming on, so she cut in loudly. "Night, Duke. Thanks again for dinner."

"Night," Nathan echoed with a small nod.

Duke waved them both off and then slipped back inside to finish closing up. Nathan walked a half-step behind Audrey as they headed toward the Bronco, a hand on the small of her back to steady her over the icy ground. At one point she slipped and Nathan threw an arm around her waist, steadying her against his body. They stood there awkwardly for a minute as Audrey struggled to regain her footing, Nathan's arms around her and Audrey leaning into his chest, her arms still full of turkey dinner. She listened to the pounding of his heart through his coat, enveloped in his scent, and realised that the arm around her shoulder had become tangled in her hair. A none-too-small part of her wanted to stay there for a while longer, which was what ultimately startled her into pulling away.

"You good?" Nathan asked, dropping his arms the moment she leant back.

"Yeah," she said, re-adjusting her grip on the food which had shifted when she'd collided with his chest. "It's a bit icy," she added sarcastically and she was rewarded with one of Nathan's characteristic slantwise grins.

"It does that in winter," he agreed dryly, and then nodded toward the truck. "Let's get you home before you end up wearing that food."

They made it back to the truck without anymore incidents and Audrey wasted no time in cranking the heaters to their highest setting the moment he'd flipped the ignition. "Wow, they jump on the Christmas thing fast," she noted at hearing a carol on the radio.

"It's a big deal around here," Nathan said with a shrug. He had pulled the Bronco onto the road before he spoke again. "Don't tell me you don't like Christmas."

"I don't mind it," she said evasively. She didn't want to admit that it was yet another holiday she had never really celebrated, apart from the hours of mass she'd attended at the orphanage as a kid. "I usually get stuck working."

Nathan glanced across at her and she knew by his piercing gaze that he'd seen straight through that. "Well, you'll probably be stuck working a bunch of the holiday events here. Winter Fest. The Christmas Eve Carnival. The Holiday Parade. Things like that."

"Seriously?" Audrey asked in surprise.

"And lighting the trees at the park," he added as an afterthought. "And I'm sure Duke will throw some sort of Christmas party that we'll get called in to break up."

"Wow," was all Audrey could manage to say to that.

"Welcome to being a small town cop," he said, seeming to know what she was thinking. "This time of year the job is less about stopping bad guys and more about making sure the Teagues don't drink too much eggnog at the Winter Ball."

"Sounds fun," Audrey responded and surprised herself by meaning it. For the first time, she was almost looking forward to the holidays. Nathan smiled but didn't say anything as he steered the truck into the Bed & Breakfast lot.

"Night, Parker," he said.

"G'night," she replied and reached over and took his hand in hers. She squeezed his cool fingers gratefully, one last thank you for his thoughtfulness. "I'll see you in the morning," she said when she let go. "We've still got a murder to solve."

"Right," Nathan said distractedly.

Audrey gathered up the bag of leftovers and hopped out into the layer of crisp snow that had already built up on the shovelled asphalt. She hurried to the door of her room and let herself in, casting one last wave to her partner before she shut the door behind her.

After managing to make Duke's leftovers fit into the little refrigerator in her room - which ultimately ended up being a real-life Tetris game - she reluctantly toed out of her warm boots. She decided the shower could wait until morning, so she changed into her pyjamas and crawled into bed, feeling warm and contented.


	5. Strike Two

“How is this part of our job description?” Audrey asked, a bit irritably. They had been patrolling the streets for almost four hours already, and she had spent most of the time grumbling complaints from behind the collar of her coat. When Nathan glanced sideways at her, all he could see of her was a tiny strip of skin between the lowered rim of her hat and the collar that had been pulled all the way up to her reddened nose.

“It’s Black Friday,” Nathan replied like that was a response. She apparently didn’t think so, judging by the way she narrowed her eyes. “Biggest shopping of the year, even here in Haven. Gets out of hand sometimes.”

“Still, doesn’t explain why we’re out here trooping around in the snow,” she said.

“Well we couldn’t exactly drive, could we?” Nathan pointed out. Main Street, along with most of the intersecting streets, was completely packed, cars trying to manoeuvre in and out of parking spots along the kerb. At that moment an argument broke out down the block as a man in an SUV starting shouting at a woman for stealing his spot. Nathan jogged ahead of Audrey to break it up, and after a lot of shouting from all of them the man finally got in his SUV and drove away.

“People are crazy,” Audrey said in exasperation as they set off down the pavement again. “All of this just to get some half-price socks.”

“You mean you don’t want to get some Christmas shopping done while we’re here?” Nathan joked. “I know Seddal is; he does every year.”

“No thanks,” Audrey said, watching the queue outside the sporting goods store shoving and elbowing each other trying to get into the packed building. “I hadn’t even thought about Christmas shopping yet,” she admitted once they’d passed. “I’ve never really had people to shop for before.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Mostly just the Chief. It’s more trouble than it’s worth anyway. Never know what to get people.” He frowned as something occurred to him. There was a new gift-worthy person in his life this year, but what in the hell was he supposed to get for Audrey?

“Well, at least you’ve got one girl who’s easy to shop for,” she said. Nathan glanced at her in confusion. “Delilah,” she clarified with a laugh.

“Oh, right,” he said. He had half-hoped she was going to drop some sort of hint of what she’d like for Christmas, but he should’ve known he wouldn’t be that lucky. “Think she’d prefer a butcher bone or a bed for the living room? I was thinking of getting it for next to the fireplace so she doesn’t have to lay on the cold floor.”

Audrey chuckled loudly. “Please, Wuornos, we both know you’ll end up getting her both and probably more,” she said. “You spoil her.”

“She’s old,” he said defensively. “I just want her to be comfortable.” Audrey nodded and hummed but he could tell she was simply humouring him. Honestly, he knew he had a weak spot for the old mutt. He liked the companionship and Delilah didn’t know what the Troubles were or that he was any different from other people. It was a nice change.

“Careful, Nathan, or she’s going to turn you soft,” Audrey teased.

He was saved from answering by a scream from the shop behind them, quickly echoed by others. He and Audrey immediately turned around and began forcing their way through the crush of people that were shoving out of the music store in alarm. It was clear no one actually knew what was going on and they were just panicked by the screams, several of them copying the sounds out of instinct. Nathan lost track of Audrey in the crowd, as her smaller frame was jostled around in the fray, but when he finally got inside the now mostly-empty lobby he spotted her ahead of him.

Nathan tailed Audrey in the direction of the storerooms, unlatching his holster and setting his hand on his gun. When he rounded the corner into the back hall, he saw an older woman leaning against the wall and looking faint as she stared through the open door of the room across from her. Audrey had drawn her gun and she turned to the room with it raised. A split second later she staggered back a step, pressing the back of one hand over her mouth.

“Parker?” Nathan asked in concern, half-jogging to her side. When he looked into the room he felt his stomach twist uncomfortably and he had to fight back nausea.

A large and clearly heavy shelving unit had fallen over, its contents spilt around it. There was a wide pool of scarlet seeping out from beneath and a man’s arm stuck out from under the side, twisted at a gruesome angle.

Turning his gaze away from the scene, Nathan pulled his radio off his belt. “Laverne, we need an ambulance down at the music store on Main.”

“Code three?” she asked.

“No hurry,” he responded grimly. “He’s dead.”

. . . . .

While Audrey and one of the EMTs looked after the traumatised shopkeeper, Nathan had worked with Seddal and the other EMTs to clear up the crime scene. The man – who was identified as the store owner, Troy Gaven – had clearly died immediately. The shelf that had fallen on him had caved in his skull along with shattering his skeleton in several different places. It had taken a lot of careful work from the EMTs to get the mangled body onto a stretcher and out of the building.

Nathan followed them out a minute later, needing a breath away from the overpowering scent of blood. In the lobby, he found Audrey talking gently to the shopwoman, who was wrapped in a blanket and shaking. He walked over and heard the woman murmuring, “Oh Troy... I don’t understand... Always told him...”

“Ms Gaven, can you tell me what happened?” Audrey prompted delicately.

“I always told him,” Ms Gaven repeated, her gaze now fixed on Audrey. “Told him that shelf needed to be bolted to the wall. But he said no, the chains would do.”

“So it was an accident,” Nathan said, glancing at his partner.

“But the chains were there,” Ms Gaven muttered. “I don’t understand. They stopped it last time. Did they break? I told him to bolt that shelf.” Audrey and Nathan exchanged grim looks and then he gestured a paramedic over to tend to the older woman, who was clearly suffering from serious shock.

“I think that’s all we’ll get from her,” Audrey said, stepping out of earshot with Nathan. “She’s the victim’s sister. As far as I could understand, he went into the back to grab some merchandise, there was a crash, and that’s when she found him.”

“Still sounds like an accident to me,” Nathan said. “Things like this happen all the time. If you don’t bolt in shelves right, they fall. Everyone knows that.”

“Clearly not this guy,” Audrey said. She frowned thoughtfully. “What was that about chains?”

“Some people use chain links to keep the shelf close to the wall,” he said. “She probably meant that. Not as safe, but better than nothing.”

“I want to check them, just to be sure.”

“You sure you’re okay to go back in there?” he asked uncertainly, recalling her pale expression when she’d first seen the body.

“I’ll be fine,” she agreed determinedly. Nathan nodded and led her back to the storeroom, and held up the police tape for her to slip under. Audrey stepped carefully around the blood on the floor, her face set, and examined the back of the shelf.

“There’s a loop here,” she announced, pointing at a metal ring that had been welded to the back. She turned to the wall and stared at the short chain link hanging there. Scowling, she pulled a pen from her coat pocket and used it to lift the link. “It’s not broken.”

“What?” Nathan asked, crossing to her and peering over her shoulder. The chain link was intact and the carabiner clip on the end untampered with. “It was just unhooked.”

“Which means this wasn’t an accident,” Audrey concluded. “So either Gaven unlocked it himself and committed a really horrible suicide...”

“Or someone else wanted him dead,” Nathan finished for her. They both looked down at the scene, the scarlet blood still puddled on the concrete floor beneath the shelves. Nathan felt his stomach churn again as the reality sank in. “This was murder.”

“Two murders in forty-eight hours,” Audrey said, shaking her head. “Who could’ve done it though? I mean with how busy it’s been, this couldn’t have been the first time he’d come in here today. So someone must have unlatched it between his trips. It must have been someone with open access to the storerooms.”

“Except on a day like this, anyone could have slipped in while they were busy up front,” Nathan pointed out, stepping back to survey the hallway. “It wouldn’t be too hard to sneak back, unhook the shelf, and slip back unnoticed if both Gaven and his sister were busy at the counter.”

Audrey frowned and moved out into the hall, glancing up at the ceiling. “There,” she said and pointed to a small black dome stuck in the corner. “They have a surveillance camera.”

“Come on, the recorder’s probably in the office,” he replied, pointing the other direction in the hall to a door with ‘Office’ printed on the front in peeling, gold script. He walked ahead of her and tested the doorknob, finding it unlocked. The room beyond was small and cramped, filled to the bursting point with a rickety desk and battered filing cabinets. There was an old computer sitting on the desk, wires running into it through holes that had been drilled into the walls by someone who clearly was not an expert.

“Charming,” Audrey said, wrinkling her nose at the overflowing trash bin.

“Makes our office seem enormous,” Nathan said with a grin. He sat down on the swivelling stool in front of the desk and jerked the mouse to get rid of the screensaver. The desktop picture was of a family, presumably the victim’s family, sitting together in a garden wearing matching tee-shirts. Nathan clicked on the small video screen in the corner and it expanded to fill the screen, showing four different camera angles inside the store. He clicked again on the one showing the vacant hallway and it opened on the screen.

“Not very high quality,” Audrey murmured vaguely, leaning in closer over his shoulder to see. The curls that had escaped from beneath her hat swept against his ear and made him shiver. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice as she reached passed him to click on the rewind button.

Neither of them spoke as they watched the images on the screen flashing backwards. At first, it was just a long stream of them, Seddal, and the EMTs moving up and down the hallway. Then it was Ms Gaven, and before that Troy Gaven himself walking backwards out of the storeroom. Nathan hastily adjusted the speed so they could watch it at a slower rate.

He could actually feel the tension rolling off of Audrey in waves as she moved in closer again, her eyes fixed intently on the screen. The time signature scrolled back steadily but the only motions were flickering shadows at the far end of the hall. Finally, a figure appeared and they both hit the pause at the same time, Audrey’s nail clipping the skin on his knuckle sharply. While he flinched away at the abrupt and unfamiliar pain, Audrey let out an agitated breath.

“It’s just Gaven,” she announced. Nathan glanced up from the shallow nick on his finger and grimaced when he too recognised the profile of the man on the screen. “No one went in there.”

“Maybe they went in before and he just lucked out,” Nathan suggested. He made to continue the video but Audrey grabbed his hand in mid-air.

“You’re bleeding,” she said, staring at the trail of blood that had blossomed on his skin.

“It’s fine, Parker,” he countered in amusement. “It’s just a little scratch.” Still, he couldn’t bring himself to pull away as she cradled his hand in her much smaller ones.

“Did I do that?” she asked, ignoring his dismissal.

“It’s a scratch,” he repeated. “I’m not going to die.” She continued to ignore him, snatching a tissue from the box on the corner of the filing cabinet. She dabbed away the blood and then checked the narrow cut. When she touched it he couldn’t stop the hiss of surprise that escaped him, the dull pain inconsequential but unexpected. “Sorry,” she said, withdrawing her finger quickly. She placed the folded-up tissue back on the cut. “You’ll be fine, just a scratch.”

“I know,” Nathan said dryly, his lips quirked.

Audrey gave him a playfully sarcastic look. “Well excuse me for not believing you,” she said, a touch over-dramatically. “Considering you think you’re fine even after you’ve been shot.”

“But I wasn’t shot. You clawed me,” he pointed out.

In her default reaction to losing an argument, Audrey reverted to changing the subject. “So, no one went in there before the victim died,” she said, turning her focus back to the computer screen.

Nathan swallowed down his disappointment when she released his hand and the nerves in his skin immediately shut off. He placed his hands on the keyboard to stop himself from reaching for her again. Something really needed to be done about this; he was becoming addicted to her touch and it was getting to be a serious distraction.

“Not at that time, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t come in before then,” he said and set the recording to rewind again. They watched it for well over fifteen minutes, all the way through to the point where Troy Gaven had opened the store first thing in the morning, but no one except him had ever set foot in the storeroom, not even his sister.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Audrey said in frustration, turning around to cock a hip against the edge of the desk. “No one but him went in that room. So who unhooked the shelves? Maybe it was Gaven. Maybe it was a suicide.”

“Or maybe it was an accident and he didn’t mean to die,” Nathan offered. “Could’ve just been trying to hurt himself as some kind of stunt. An insurance thing, or to sue whoever built the shelves or something.”

“Or maybe we just can’t see them,” she said thoughtfully and her expression morphed into the one she usually wore when she’d picked up on something everyone else missed. “Like they were invisible or...” She trailed off, standing up and leaving the room deliberately.

“Parker?” Nathan asked, jumping up and hurrying after her. She went into the storeroom and when he caught up he found her standing near the far wall, her head tilted back as she looked upwards. He followed her gaze to see a small ventilation duct, probably for the air conditioning, with the grate that should have been covering it missing. There was just an opening left behind, a foot wide and four inches tall.

“Or maybe it was someone who could come in through a very small space,” Audrey said.

Nathan understood the significance instantly. “Just like Bart Keller.”


	6. Fraying Threads

Shortly after their discovery, a second medical car arrived to pick up the spooked and shaking Ms Gaven. Nathan was shepherding her through the crowd of curious onlookers when a woman broke through to the front and let out a terrible wail. “Margaret,” she cried, and tried to shove her way passed the patrolmen lining the barricade. “That’s my sister-in-law. Where’s Troy? Where’s my husband? Let me go!”

Nathan left Ms Gaven in the hands of the medics and walked over to the other hysterical woman, wishing he had Audrey’s help. She was much better than him at calming people down, but she was still inside surveying the storeroom for possible clues. He didn’t even get a chance to open his mouth before the woman’s wide eyes locked on him with frightening intensity. “Detective, please, what happened?” she asked weakly, gripping the arm of the officer holding her back like it was a lifeline. “Where’s Troy?”

“Are you Mrs Gaven?” he asked, but he already knew the answer. He recognised her face from the family picture on the store computer.

The woman nodded tremulously, her eyes never leaving Nathan’s. “Please, where’s my husband?”

“Mrs Gaven, I think we should have a word in private,” Nathan said as calmly and compassionately as he could, lowering his voice against the noisy crowd. The woman’s eyes immediately welled with tears, sensing the truth in his tone. Mrs Gaven half-shrieked as she collapsed into the arms of the patrol officer, who awkwardly patted her back as she sobbed against his coat. “Michaels, would you take her back to the station and make her comfortable? I’ll be up to see her shortly.”

“Right,” the rookie officer said, straightening up. “C’mon, Mrs Gaven. Let’s get you taken care of.” He put an arm around the shaking woman’s shoulders and steered her through the crowd, which parted for the pair.

Nathan took a deep, steadying breath and slipped back inside of the shop. The door had just swung shut behind him when Audrey emerged from the back hallway and she crossed quickly to him. “I’ve got them dusting for prints on the shelf, the chain, and that air vent. Maybe they left behind something that we can use.”

“Little elf fingerprints maybe?” Nathan offered and Audrey fixed him with the same exasperated look she used every time he suggested doubt at her theories. “Vic’s wife showed up, Michaels took her up to the station so we can talk to her when she calms down.”

Audrey grimaced and nodded. “Well, I think we’ve done all we can here,” she said, looking around at the remaining handful of policemen that were finishing up the necessary tasks. She sighed and he understood the gesture. Having to deal with one grieving widow was bad enough, let alone two of them back-to-back.

“C’mon, we can stop for coffee on the way,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. “It’ll take awhile for her to calm down enough to talk, and you look like you’re still cold.”

“I could go for a coffee,” she agreed, rubbing her bare hands together.

Nathan eyed the motion and said, “You know, you really ought to get some gloves.” The exasperated look Audrey gave him made him wonder if he’d told her that already, but he didn’t think that he had. He couldn’t say for sure, though, he had been more forgetful than usual lately.

The crowd outside the shop had diminished now that people could see that the drama had finished and it seemed that the majority of them had returned to their shopping. Nathan ignored the curious glances from citizens as he and Audrey made the long walk back to the far end of High Street where they had left the Bronco parked.

Apart from grumbling something to herself as she fought with the tricky heating in the truck, Audrey was silent and Nathan missed her constant chatter. Normally she would be spouting off various increasingly more unbelievable theories, but her mindless ramblings had been fewer and far between. The pressing quiet between them reminded him of the brief time he had spent deaf during the Sandglass murders. Of all the sounds and patterns he had missed, it was the energetic cadence of his partner’s voice that had left him feeling empty.

And when his eyes had gone as well...

Nathan grimaced and tried to shake away the utter hopelessness that had taken over at that moment. If it hadn’t been for the staggering touch of her hand, he didn’t want to think how long he could’ve been stuck like that; trapped inside of his own broken body, a consciousness completely separate from the world, and with no way to end it on his own. He had never felt so alone, so isolated, so - not human.

A cold brush across the back of his hand startled Nathan back to the present and he realised Audrey was saying his name. “Nathan, you okay?”

“Hmm, yeah, why?” he asked.

“You just drove passed Rosemary’s, for one,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder.

Nathan cursed in irritation and pulled up into the next available spot against the kerb. “Keep warm. I’ll get it,” he said.

“Nathan, wait,” Audrey’s grip on his wrist stopped him from getting out of the truck, and he glanced across the cab at her. That little line had formed between her eyebrows, the one she always got when she was worried. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Honestly, with her frigid, narrow fingers curled around his wrist, one of her fingertips in just the exact place so he could feel his own pulse point, he was about as far from fine as possible, but that didn’t stop him from saying it. “Fine. Just distracted,” he lied. “Thinking about the case.” Then he pulled his hand free, flashed her a stiff smile, and climbed out of the cab.

Before the door shut, he caught the aggravated sigh she probably didn’t mean for him to hear.

Nathan managed to get Audrey to drop her inquisition by springing for a blueberry muffin along with their coffees, and the warm pastry kept her thoroughly engrossed until they reached the station. The bullpen was nearly empty with the majority of their officers out patrolling the streets.

The bullpen was nearly empty with the majority of their officers out patrolling the streets. Of the few people left, Officer Michaels was lingering awkwardly near the interrogation table closest to the offices, where Mrs Gaven was sitting. She didn’t seem to be crying anymore, although her eyes were rimmed with smudged mascara and she had settled into a numb shock. Michaels looked up gratefully when Nathan and Audrey entered the room.

“Thanks, Marshall,” Audrey said, giving the rookie a reassuring smile.

Michaels furrowed his brow and glanced over her head uncertainly at Nathan. Smirking, Nathan just nodded. “Right, no problem, Detective Parker,” the younger cop said and headed across the station to his desk. Nathan considered pointing out Audrey’s mistake to her but as she walked around to crouch beside Mrs Gaven, he filed that memo away for later.

“Mrs Gaven,” Audrey started. The older woman seemed to startle awake and focused her red-rimmed eyes on them. “I’m sorry to bother you with questions at a time like this. We’ll try to keep it as short as possible. Why don’t we talk in the office?”

“He said there was an accident,” Mrs Gaven said quietly as she shuffled into the little office with them. "That Troy's-" She broke off with a choked noise.

Audrey ushered her to the sofa and took a seat beside her before answering. “A shelf in the storage room collapsed,” she explained as succinctly as she could. Mrs Gaven covered her mouth with a hand, hiccoughing wetly. “We wanted to ask you a few questions before we let you get back to your family. Did your husband have any enemies? Anyone he didn’t get along with?”

“No, of course not,” she said, sniffling. Nathan grabbed the tissue box from the desk and offered it to her. She took one with a murmured thanks and dabbed at her face. “Everyone loves Troy. He teaches music at the grade school and all of the children love him. No one ever had a word to say against him.”

“He hasn’t had any altercations lately?” Audrey pressed gently.

“No, nothing,” Mrs Gaven said, frowning. “Why? I thought you said it was an accident.”

“We're trying to cover all of our bases,” Audrey said. “How long ago did your husband install the chain links on the shelves?”

“A few months ago,” Mrs Gaven said. “It would’ve been August, right before the school year started. They almost collapsed on him then; a box fell and broke his foot. That’s when we made him do something. I wanted him to bolt them but he said - he said the chains would be enough. That’s what Lee told him.”

“Lee?” Nathan asked, an eyebrow arching up.

“Lee O’Donnell,” she expanded. “The metalworker. He’s the one who installed the chains.”

Nathan nodded and hastily wrote the name on a pad of paper from Audrey’s desk. “What about Bart Keller?” he asked. “Did your husband know him?”

“Bart, yeah,” she said, looking up in confusion. “We all went to school together. Troy and Bart were friends, they played hockey together. We don’t see him much anymore except at the kids’ school things. Why, what does Bart have to do with any of this?”

“Bart Keller was killed yesterday,” Audrey said. “With the two deaths happening so close together, we were just wondering if there was some connection between them.”

Mrs Gaven frowned and shook her head. “We haven’t seen Bart in weeks,” she said. “I saw his wife, Judith, at Halloween. We both chaperoned the costume dance at the high school; our kids are in school together. But Bart, I don’t even know the last time we talked to him. Easter Sunday, maybe? At mass.”

Nathan and Audrey exchanged meaningful glances, and he gave the smallest of nods in response to the question in her eyes. “Alright, Mrs Gaven,” she said, touching the woman’s shoulder gently, “I think that’s all we need. If we have any more questions we’ll be in touch, but now we’re going to have Officer Marshall take you home.”

“Yes, thank you,” Mrs Gaven murmured as Nathan escorted her back out into the bullpen. He handed her off to Michaels with instruction to take her home and then went back into the office, where Audrey had already taken up her post behind her desk. She was staring pensively as she nursed her coffee.

“Not many answers,” Nathan remarked as he settled in at his desk. He took a deep swallow of his own coffee, knowing that the delay from the questioning would have cooled it more than enough for safety. “No real connection.”

“Unless someone has a vengeance against the old high school hockey team,” Audrey said sarcastically. She leant back in the chair, twisting to face him. “What other links do we have between them?”

“Nothing in their work,” Nathan said. “Doubt Keller ever went in a music store. We’ll have to do a check to make sure that Gaven didn’t take out a business loan from Keller or anything.”

“Which means it’s back to research and paperwork,” Audrey said, sighing heavily.

“Could be back out in the snow,” Nathan pointed out.

Audrey immediately sat up and tugged at the sleeves of her jumper. “I’ll pass,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I’m going to pull up the newspaper archives, see if I can find anything similar from before.”

“Leaving today’s paperwork for me,” he concluded dryly, immediately reaching for the drawer that contained his stack of incident reports. As he started filling out the habitual lines, a comfortable silence settled in the office. It was familiar and Nathan felt the tension headache that had been forming slowly filtering away.

He had missed this, the casual air that laid between them when they were working a case together. Ever since she’d first come to Haven, they had fallen into a perfect give-and-take that allowed them to work in sync. He had never known anyone he could play off of so well or someone who could understand without words exactly what he meant. But things had felt strained for the last few months, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was at least mostly to blame.

The revelation that he could feel Audrey’s touch certainly could have gone better. He had known that he needed to tell her, that the longer he kept the truth from her the angrier she would be with him when he finally told her, but he had never been able to find the right words. All things considered, Audrey had taken the revelation well enough, but he figured that the fact he had nearly died had been part of that. He couldn’t help but wonder if those feelings - betrayal or anger or something - were still humming there under the surface and just hadn’t been let out yet.

And to make matters worse, he felt that maybe she was pulling away from him. During the Sandglass case, they had seemed to drift closer together. The earnestness of her touch as she had dutifully led him around, keeping him by her side at all times; the insistent concern she had shown when she had thought that his life was in danger; the way her firm grip was the last thing he’d felt before losing consciousness and the first thing he’d felt upon waking again. He had thought that it meant something more, but since his recovery she had been drawing away again, giving him mixed signals in the form of tender touches of the hand promptly followed by averted eyes and stiff responses.

Nathan would be the first to admit that he’d never been very good at picking up on social cues, but he was pretty sure that even an expert would be thrown by the chaos of emotions she was displaying lately.

“Stupid computer,” Audrey muttered viciously, hammering at a few of the keys and then sitting back in her chair with a huff. “I could look this stuff up faster the old-fashioned way.”

“Just give it a minute,” Nathan said placatingly. “The snow slows the internet down.”

“Hmm, good thing crime takes the winter off then,” she replied irritably, not taking her eyes off the offending loading bar on the screen.

Nathan fought back his smile at her impatience. “Think we’re budgeted for upgrades next year,” he offered casually.

Audrey snorted and shot him a quick glare. “That doesn’t exactly do me a lot of good right now, does it?” she said. She glanced back at the screen and her eyes brightened. “Ah, finally.” Triumphant, she leant her elbows forward on the desk and began scanning down the article she’d pulled up. He watched passively as her smile fell and her brow furrowed before she reached the end of the page and clicked away from it.

“Nothing useful?” he asked.

“Honestly, it’s hard to tell,” she admitted. “I mean, there are dozens of hard-to-explain deaths but none of these articles have said much of anything about the crime scenes. And it’s not like they ever come right out and says ‘a guy was killed in a room locked from the inside,’ or anything. Apart from that, we don’t have much to go on. Our killer doesn’t exactly have a steady M.O.”

Nathan glanced down at the incident report he’d somehow managed to fill out on auto-pilot and then up at the clock on the wall. “It was a long shot anyway,” he supplied with a shrug.

“Well, I want to go talk to that welder, see if he has anything,” she said, twirling a pen between her fingers with frightening speed. “Maybe he can give us some details about that chain he installed, tell us if anyone was asking questions about it or if he’s done similar work for someone else recently.”

“It’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” he said, pushing back from the desk and standing up. “Gotta leave now if we want dinner tonight.”

Audrey frowned and looked at her watch. “It’s only four.”

“Yeah, but we gotta go work the tree lighting at the park,” he said, arching an eyebrow when he realised she had forgotten about it already. They had been talking about it that morning when he had picked her up. Comprehension lit on her face and he rubbed his upper lip to hide his smile. “Exactly,” he said. “So if we don’t eat now, we’re not eating until it’s over.”

“Do we really have to go to this?” Audrey asked.

“Humbug,” he chuckled. “And yes. Whole force on patrol, Chief’s orders.” He glanced at her computer pointedly and added, “Not like we’re making any progress.” She grudgingly nodded and began shutting down her computer. Nathan walked over and grabbed her coat from the hook by the door, holding it out for her to put on. “Don’t worry, it’s not too bad.”

“Just cold,” she retorted as she slipped into the coat.

“Never really noticed,” Nathan said as he grabbed his own coat. When she looked up at him, he shot her a sideways smile, and for the first time all day she genuinely laughed.

“I may have to do something about that.”


	7. Fairy Lights

After filling up at the diner on Muriel’s chicken pot pie, Audrey and Nathan made their way to the city park. There was still at least an hour until sunset and the lighting, but already clusters of families were standing around on the blocked-off roadway around the park and city square, huddled together and sipping at cups of church-provided hot cocoa. Nathan parked the Bronco in the lot beside the grocery store and Audrey huddled down inside her coat in anticipation of the bad weather.

“You can wait here in the truck for a while if you want,” Nathan said, giving the park an appraising look. “Not too crowded, don’t need you for patrols just yet.”

A moment of indecision hit Audrey - God, wouldn’t she prefer to hide out in the truck with the heaters blasting all night - but she shook her head. “I’d rather keep moving,” she said, tugging the furry laplander more snugly down over her ears. She caught the quick flash of a smile on Nathan’s face before he turned and climbed out of the truck, and she knew she’d made the right decision, she was going to continue enjoying this brief time free of awkwardness between them. She walked around the front of the truck to join him and they wandered into the park side-by-side.

Audrey glanced around curiously as they made a slow circuit of the cordoned off area. Children were bolting through the snow drifts, building giant, misshapen snowmen with sticks and gravel for accessories. Parents were clustered on the shovelled pavements or at the plastic picnic tables, gossiping and keeping an eye on the colourful blurs of kids. A few small booths were scattered along the road, selling roasted nuts, steaming pastries, and hot drinks. The local radio station was playing Christmas carols from the back of their ancient van. She’d never seen the people so happy, despite the quicky declining temperature.

“This is so strange,” she admitted aloud as they ambled past a group of older men smoking away from the crowd. Ever the eloquent one, Nathan arched a questioning eyebrow. “I don’t know, I guess I just don’t really get this whole Christmas thing.”

“I thought you were raised by nuns?” Nathan asked.

“No, not that part,” Audrey said, laughing at the confusion. “I know what Christmas is, I just don’t understand all of the fuss. The decorating and celebrating and standing around in the cold all night just to see some trees light up.”

Nathan shrugged. “It’s fun.”

Audrey giggled into the collar of her coat. “Nathan Wuornos, advocating fun.”

He rolled his eyes deliberately. “It’s tradition then. This has been going on for decades. I went every year as a kid.”

Audrey looked out at the kids playing in the snow and imagined Nathan as the little gangly-limbed kid from the photo album she’d found in his living room. A slow smile stole across her face at the thought. “I’ve never really done this stuff before,” she said and was surprised by the pang of longing in her chest. Judging by the look in her partner’s eyes, he heard it as well. “It was always just that time of year when suicides spiked and serial killers got really creative.”

“Cheerful,” Nathan remarked dryly. The park was getting progressively more crowded as the sun sank into the cloud-covered horizon, and they were forced to weave awkwardly around packs of people. Audrey blew out a heavy breath and buried her hands deeper in her pockets. In the next moment, Nathan had pulled off his gloves and held them out to her with a succinct, “Here.”

“It’s fine,” Audrey immediately dismissed. “I don’t want to steal your gloves.”

“Like my jacket?” he asked with a grin and she thought fleetingly of the over-large flannel jacket she had borrowed months ago during a freak rainstorm and forgotten to return. Well, 'forgotten' might be the wrong word. She’d forgotten for the first few weeks, and then eventually she’d gotten attached. “Seriously, Parker, just take ‘em. I don’t need them.”

“Just because you can’t feel it doesn’t mean you don’t need them,” she reminded him briskly but he didn’t so much as blink in reaction to the stern statement. With a sigh, she accepted them and tugged the worn leather onto her hands, revelling in the residual body heat that made them comfortably hot inside. They were far too big for her narrow hands, but when she adjusted the collar of her coat again she could smell warm leather and the ambery-pine scent of Nathan, and she found herself wanting to keep them as well.

“Just about time,” Nathan added, checking his watch before jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Night had fallen completely, leaving the park and square illuminated purely by the lampposts staggered every few yards. The children had settled down and were now bouncing in anticipation around their parents’ ankles, as what seemed to be the entire population of Haven crowded the road and pavement around the park.

Nathan wound his way to the back of the gathering, Audrey slipping through in the wake left behind by his presence, and settled to a stop in the open area left behind. A few of the other patrol officers were standing together a couple of metres to their left, chatting amiably. “No point forcing our way through that crowd,” Nathan commented at her questioning look. “Now we’re just here in case trouble breaks out.”

“Normal trouble, or trouble with a capital T?” Audrey asked shrewdly.

“Both,” was his simple response. They shifted in the open spot, Audrey tossing her weight from one leg to the other in a vain attempt to generate friction for warmth. After a few minutes, Nathan glanced down at her again. “You see?”

“See what?” Audrey asked, cop instincts immediately going into over-drive as she scanned the crowd for any signs of danger.

Nathan chuckled, the shallow exhales crystallising in clouds before his lips. “The lights,” he clarified. “Can you see the lights? Your first Christmas lighting, you’d better have a good view.”

Audrey glanced up at him, her eyes slightly narrowed and her head tilted to the side as she appraised him. She knew that her partner had a soft side beneath his silent, Mainer stoicism, but lately he seemed to be particularly sentimental. First with the unexpected Thanksgiving, getting along with Duke to do something nice for her, and now this. What had gotten into him?

Nathan’s arched eyebrow reminded her that he was still waiting for an answer. Casting her eyes around the park, she nodded. “Yeah, I can see.” Nathan responded with nothing more than an affirmative grunt before turning his gaze back to the park.

Audrey had barely gotten the chance to start musing on her partner’s strange behaviour before a rustling and murmuring started up in the crowd. People began to applaud as an older man mounted a small stage in front of the largest pine tree and, to Audrey’s surprise, even Nathan clapped shortly for the man. “Mayor Brody,” he offered when he caught her curious look.

“Popular guy,” she noted, looking around at the incredibly adoring crowd that the mayor was trying to quiet with a wave of his hands. There might be something weird about it. Or maybe they were just grateful to get things started and to get out of the cold. Audrey made a note to look up more about the mayor when she got some free time, just in case.

“Welcome, everyone,” Mayor Brody said cheerfully into the microphone, his voice echoing over the park and finally silencing everyone, “And Happy Holidays. Now as some of you know, today has been a hard day for some of our own, with the untimely loss of two of our own. But in this festive season, I would like us all to remember to show compassion to our fellow man and to extend a helping hand to those that need it.

“Now, I could prattle on longer, but it’s cold and there’s no reason to make these eager little kids wait any longer, I think.” The mayor lifted a small remote, his gloved thumb poised over the cartoonishly red button. “Merry Christmas, Haven!” he declared loudly and pressed the button.

Gasps of pleasure sounded as the park was suddenly flooded with light. Trees and lampposts, fences and railings all lit up with white specks.  As a contrast, all of the pine trees were wrapped in multi-coloured fairy lights, rainbow waves washing over the snowbanks. The largest pine tree, in its place of honour, was decorated with gold and silver baubles that caught the lights and cast them around. At the very top of the tree, a brilliant star flared into life, its many narrow points comprised of dozens of tiny little spots of gold that glowed like a beacon against the dark, cloudy sky.

Audrey gasped in awe as she gazed up at the sheer magnitude. Everything had taken on a whole new face in the lights. The heaps of snow and lop-sided snowmen were bathed in an array of colours like stained glass. The icicles that clung to the railings and tree branches magnified the white lights and sent glittering flecks of light into the air. The softly falling snow was illuminated in the sudden glow, the glimmering dots drifting in and out of reality as they descending onto the waiting viewers. It was - magical.

Nathan made a soft noise and Audrey glanced up to find him watching her face. He grinned, a small, sideways smirk, and his storm blue eyes sparkled. “Told you it’s worth it.”

Audrey smiled and nudged him with her elbow playfully, but it didn’t take long for her eyes to drift back to the park. The Havenites were cheering, children jumping up and down with joy as they gazed around at the holiday fares. There was something comforting and warm in the sight, and Audrey wondered if this is what it felt like to have a place. To have somewhere with roots and traditions and familiarity. If maybe Haven had become her first true home.

They stood in quiet reverence for a few minutes more and then Nathan nudged her with his elbow - he missed her arm and hit her in the shoulder blade, but it was a nice effort on his part. “C’mon, Parker, time to go play traffic cop for a while.”

They spent the next two hours ushering people out of the park to their cars and stopping people from backing over their neighbours in their cars. It was exhausting and frustrating work, worse even than the morning shoppers had been. As the temperature continued to plummet and night sunk its claws in around them, they finally managed to dissipate the crowd and clear off all but the last few hangers-on who were packing up their drink tables or enjoying a last cigarette of the night.

Nathan came and found Audrey where she had been helping Michaels - whose name badge told her she’d been calling him by the wrong name for days - to deal with a family in a minivan who were bound and determined to go down the main road even though it was still cordoned off for pedestrians. “Oh thank God, do we get to go home?” she asked when she spotted him walking up to her.

“Yeah, Chief says it’s time to call it a night,” he said. “Says these last few people can fend for themselves.” He nodded his head in the direction of the Bronco and Audrey fell into step beside him gratefully. “You frozen?”

“Completely,” Audrey admitted through chattering teeth. Her coat and Nathan’s gloves had helped, but the cold had seeped through her jeans and into her bones, and bitten at every inch of exposed skin on her face and neck. “I’m going to need a very hot shower tonight.”

“I’ve got a fireplace,” Nathan said and seemed to surprise even himself by saying it. “I’m not suggesting anything,” he added hastily, looking alarmed. “But I’m decorating my house tonight and I thought maybe you’d like to help. I mean, unless you’re going to get your own, or you’re not interest-”

“I’d love to,” Audrey cut across her partner’s awkward rambling. “So long as there’s warm food involved. Or beer.”

The lines of Nathan’s face eased and the corner of his mouth turned up again. “I think I can manage something.” They climbed into the truck and Audrey hunkered down in her spot as Nathan pulled them out onto the road again. A comfortable silence held until they had turned into the residential part of Haven. “So,” Nathan started quietly, “you liked that?”

“It was beautiful,” Audrey agreed. She caught a glimpse of the smile on her partner’s face as they passed beneath a street lamp and she rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to be so smug about it,” she chided in amusement. “I guess I’ve just never really stopped to pay attention to things like fairy lights and Christmas trees before. It was nice. Different, but nice.” She decided not to mention the feeling of homecoming and contentment that she’d felt, and most certainly not the touch of excitement. Nathan was already looking too self-satisfied for his own good.

Only the porch light was on at Nathan’s bungalow when they pulled up, crushing the thin layer of snow that had settled in the driveway since morning. When he let them into the house, Delilah slid down off the sofa with a huff and came over to greet them, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. Nathan scratched her ears with a fond “Hey girl,” before they shed their winter clothes.

Audrey wandered into the living room, hoping to coax Nathan into lighting the fire, but stopped short when she noticed an evergreen in the corner of the room. It was wide and a deep, rich emerald, the top branches only centimetres away from brushing the ceiling. “That’s new,” she remarked over her shoulder.

“Got it yesterday,” Nathan answered, slipping around her to crouch at the grate. “Laverne’s nephew dropped it off while we were working, he has an evergreen farm up the hill and gives all the cops a discount.”

“Huh,” Audrey said appreciatively. The sweet, earthy smell of pine was heavy in the room as she breathed it in. “I might have to get a little one for my place, it smells amazing.”

Nathan straightened up as the fire caught in the grate and dusted his hands on his pants. “Don’t know why people get fake ones,” he said, shaking his head lightly. “You help me get the boxes down from the attic while we wait for the fire to catch? Then you can warm up while I find us food.”

“Okay,” Audrey agreed. “I didn’t even know you had an attic.”

Nathan led the way down the hall, Audrey and Delilah both following on his heels. “Well it’s more of a crawl space,” he conceded. Standing on his socked toes, he grabbed a slip of string that hung a few short inches from the ceiling. As he pulled it down a door opened up, a sliding ladder unfolding in front of him. “It’s only about three feet tall,” he said, shaking the ladder to make sure it was stable before starting to climb. “But it’s good for keeping boxes out of the way.”

Audrey stood at the base of the ladder, one foot on the bottom rung to help keep the ladder steady, and watched as Nathan pulled the utility torch off his belt and flipped it on. She could see the ceiling of the attic, all exposed wooden beams and puffy insulation, just a few inches above his head as he leant in to reach for the boxes.

She was also getting a very good view of his long legs and backside, the muscles flexed under his tight jeans as he stood on his toes. But she was trying not to focus on that even as she felt heat crawl up her neck and chest at the sight.

“Careful with these,” he said, drawing back with a cardboard box clutched in his hands. “Glass.” He passed the box down and she set it on the ground a few feet from the ladder before hurrying back. He handed down one more box marked ‘fragile’ in blocky marker, and then another that he warned was heavier. As she set down the last one, Nathan climbed down from the ladder and allowed the trapdoor to fold back up into the ceiling.

“I’ll take these two if you grab that one,” he said, pointing at the heavier of the boxes. Audrey picked it up and carried it back to the living room while Nathan balanced the two fragile ones in his long arms. Once all three were settled down on the floor beside the tree, Nathan pointed at the now blazing fire. “Go ahead, I’ll grab some food and a couple beers.”

Audrey glanced up at Nathan and promptly burst out in giggles. The look of shocked alarm that Nathan gave her was almost funnier than the fact that he had bits of insulation clinging to his hair and she struggled to control her laughter so she could explain. “You’ve got-” Another peal of laughter cut her off and she gave up. Walking over, she stood on her toes and plucked a piece of the pinkish fluff from his head.

Nathan’s eyes widened in surprise and then he chuckled. He reached up and swept a hand back over his hair, brushing the pieces of insulation from his hair. They both laughed while Audrey picked out the last few bits he’d missed, but as she dropped her hands an awkward tension welled up between them. The fact that they were a mere hair’s breadth away, so close Audrey could feel the warmth radiating off his body and his breath ghosting across her face as he looked down at her, became shockingly relevant. That electric charge was back, the one that surrounded them whenever they got too close.

Nathan abruptly cleared his throat and took a step back. “Right, food. I’ll be back.”

Audrey smiled and sat down on the hearth as he disappeared into the kitchen. The fire was warm and washed over her like a hot bath, and she couldn’t help but sigh in relief. She pulled her feet up to rest on the stone, letting the heat soak into her frigid toes. She needed thicker socks. Delilah wandered over and sat down beside her with a huff, leaning her head against Audrey’s hip.

“Hello, Miss Delilah,” she said and removed one hand from its spot above the flames to stroke the old dog’s head. “Why aren’t you in bothering Nathan?” Delilah sighed heavily and then her mouth fell open in what could only be described as a grin before she nuzzled into Audrey’s side.

Audrey’s mind drifted to the case, poring over the information they had so far in the hopes that something new would jump out to her. She was still at it, staring deep into the fire where the flames turned from gold to white-blue, when Nathan sat down on the hearth by her feet. “Grilled cheese and a local brew,” he announced, offering her a plate with a deliciously dripping sandwich and a blue bottle.

Audrey made an appreciative noise as she accepted it and folded her legs up so there was more room for her partner. She wasted no time in taking a bite of the sandwich, feeling a childish enjoyment as the warm cheese dripped onto her chin. The heat of the food filled her insides and pushed away the chill that the night had soaked into her. She devoured the sandwich in no time flat, and by the time she had washed it down with a sip of the microbrew Nathan was only half finished with his own.

“You’ve got,” he said, pointing at her chin with a smile on his face. Audrey wiped her face with the back of her hand, rubbing away the spot of cheese and leftover crumbs. “Hungry?”

“Cold,” she said with a shrug, taking another swallow of the crisp amber lager. “And it was good.”

Nathan nodded, eating his sandwich with one hand and patting Delilah’s back with the other. While she waited for him to finish, Audrey slid down onto the floor and opened one of the boxes curiously. The heavier one that she had carried was full of bundled up strands of fairy lights in a variety of colours. She pushed it aside and pulled down one of the fragile ones, prying the lid off carefully. All she could see were scrunched up balls of newspaper, dutifully wrapped around the individual items to protect the contents from jostling. She tentatively peeled back the paper on a top one and gasped. Inside was a beautifully elaborate snowflake carved out of glass.

“My god, Nathan, this is gorgeous,” she said, gingerly lifting the ornament out by its silver string. “Where did you get it?”

“Family heirloom,” he said, brushing the last of the crumbs from his face and setting the plate on the hearth. “My great-grandfather on Mom’s side made them. He was a glassblower. I inherited them when I moved out.”

“The Chief didn’t want them anymore?” Audrey asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Nathan shrugged uncomfortably. “He’s never really been into holidays, that was always Mom’s thing. We stopped really doing stuff like that after she died.”

“They’re beautiful,” Audrey said, nudging aside more paper to reveal a diamond-like star and an intricately swirled icicle. “It’s a shame to keep these in a box.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, kneeling down beside her on the floor. “Let me string these lights and then we’ll put them up.” Nathan slid beneath the tree, lacing the first strand of white fairy lights through the lowest branches, while Audrey alternated between laying out the ornaments on the coffee table and scratching Delilah’s belly where the old dog lay by the fire.

There was a comfortable domesticity about the affair, Audrey passing new strands of lights to Nathan whenever he reached the end of one. They both sipped their way through his six pack of beers and poked fun at each other, chatting amiably about work or even sitting in companionable silence. When Nathan had nearly reached the top of the tree, Audrey wandered over to the radio that sat on the bookshelf and flicked it on. The local radio station piped out an old Christmas carol, something so classic even Audrey knew it by heart. Nathan peered at her from beneath his arm and for a moment she thought he was going to comment on the action, but he simply smiled and went back to his work.

“Alright, that’ll do it,” he said, tucking the trailing end of the light strand down along the trunk. The interspersed layers of white and blue lights cast a frosty glow over the dark branches as he stepped back to check his handiwork, the white consistently lit while the blues dimmed in and out of existence. “Let’s get these up.”

Audrey picked up the snowflake ornament, the first one she’d unwrapped, and carefully looped the string around one of the branches near the middle of the tree. A blue light was directly behind it, and as it blinked it sent out starbursts of sapphire light through the faceted glass. She stood and admired it for a moment until Nathan brushed past her to hang another ornament, startling her back to reality.

It took them nearly an hour to get through all of the glass shapes and baubles, meticulously placing them at intervals around the tree. Near the bottom of the first box, Audrey found the first ornament that didn’t match the theme and she surveyed it curiously. It was a white ceramic pair of bells, tied together with a ribbon at the top, with a date some twenty-odd years ago painted onto the fronts in pink script.

“The day my parents got married,” Nathan said, noticing her attention. “December ninth. Someone got them that as a wedding gift for their first Christmas as a married couple.”

“This is barely more than twenty years ago,” she noted, doing the math in her head. “You were what? Eight, nine?”

Nathan shrugged. “They were unconventional,” he said simply. “Mom always said things for them never quite happened in the right order, but it worked out in the end.”

“That’s sweet,” Audrey said, smiling gently. She hung the bells in a place of honour near the top of the tree.

As they got into the second box, which was half-filled with tinsel and porcelain baubles, they stumbled across more and more of the ornaments with deeper meanings. A silver and blue sock with an N stitched onto the ankle that was for his first Christmas. A snowman made out of beads and pipe-cleaners that had been made by a six-year-old Nathan. A tiny family photo in a gold frame that showed a beaming Chief - with dark hair and fewer wrinkles - with an arm around the pretty woman from the photo album and a young, lanky Nathan.

Finally, at the bottom, after Nathan had sprinkled the branches with tinsel icicles, he drew out a deep red, velvet tree skirt and a golden star. The hemming around the skirt was frayed, and the glittering paint on the star had chipped in a few small spots, but he carried them with a sort of reverence that belied their meaning. He glanced up at Audrey, those blue-gray eyes alive with an emotion she hadn’t yet learned to place, and the corner of his lips quirked. “You want to do the honours?”

“Me?” she asked in surprise.

“Sure, it’s about time you get to put a star on a tree, don’t you think?” he said, offering it out to her.

Audrey accepted it delicately and then looked up at the treetop uncertainly. The tree was looming close to eight feet tall, putting that topmost branch out of her reach. “I’m too short,” she pointed out. She looked around the room for a chair to pull over and found none. “I’d need a lift, or maybe it’d just be easier if you do it.”

“Here,” Nathan said, setting the tree skirt aside and walking up to stand beside her at the tree. He crouched just slightly and surprised her by putting his arm low around her waist. “Ready?” he asked. Audrey hastily wrapped her free arm around his shoulders as he tightened his grasp and straightened up, her feet leaving the ground. She felt his arm, warm and strong around her waist, and his other hand clutching at her side to steady her, and for a moment she forgot what she was supposed to be doing.

Right, the star.

Still clinging to his shoulder with one arm, she leant out and placed the star on the highest branch, checking that it was balanced before finally letting it go. When her hand returned to Nathan’s shoulder, he lowered her carefully until her feet met the ground again with a soft whisper of wool on hardwood. He released her, stepping back to give her space, and Audrey felt a bitter chill at the loss of contact.

“There, see. Teamwork,” Nathan said, and she pretended not to notice the pink in his ears and cheeks or the way he was idly running his fingers along his inner arm, where her lifted shirt hem had let his skin touch hers. Turning around hastily, he grabbed the tree skirt and crawled beneath the tree - _stop staring at his ass, Audrey_ \- and laid out the aged velvet around the trunk and stand. When he slid back out and to his feet, they both crossed the room to survey their efforts.

“Nathan, it looks amazing,” Audrey said breathlessly. The lights refracted through the glass ornaments, sending sprays of light in every direction. This tree, though, despite being so much smaller and less elaborate, had something that the glorious trees of the park didn’t. The ornaments that didn’t match the fancy glass ones only served to make the tree more majestic, giving it an aura of history and family and memories; everything Audrey thought a Christmas tree should be. It was, without a doubt, the single most beautiful tree she’d ever seen.

“Yeah, it does,” he agreed. Audrey glanced sideways and found his eyes on her. He blinked and looked away quickly. He retrieved their abandoned beers - third of the night - and they settled down on the sofa to watch the glow of the tree fill the room, the crisp whiteness battling with the warm ruddy fire. “Thanks for your help,” Nathan said after a long pull on his beer.

“Thanks for inviting me,” she replied. She reached across the cushion and took his hand, giving it an appreciative squeeze. “This was - it was great. Thank you.”


	8. A Morning Coffee

Audrey woke slowly and reluctantly; she was warm, comfortable and, for the first time in a solid week, not plagued by nightmares. As her mind crawled toward consciousness, she groaned and rolled over, pulling the blankets up snugly around her shoulders. It was Saturday, she didn’t need to be up anytime soon. Honestly, she could just stay here in her warm bed all day if she wanted to.

Except no, she had a case to solve, suspects to interview. She groaned again and buried her face in the pillow, breathing in the soft ambery scent. Wait a second... No, that wasn’t right. Her bed smelled of lavender, like the cheap laundry soap she’d bought last month. And now that she thought about it, this didn’t feel like her bed. Where was that spot where the B&B’s ancient mattress dipped in on the left side? And these sheets were so much softer than her own.

Perplexed, Audrey pried her eyes open and looked around. The small room, with its sand-tone walls and a lovely armoire in the corner, looked distinctly familiar although she was having a hard time placing it. Wherever she was, it certainly wasn’t her room.

The scent reached her again and comprehension struck her like a freight train. _Nathan_. Of course, that’s why the room looked familiar. She had stayed in this room once before, on the longest and most agonising night of her life. The guest bedroom at Nathan’s house, where she had attempted to sleep while Nathan lay in the next room deafened during the Sandglass case. No wonder it had taken her so long to place it; she’d only spent a few restless hours in the room before going back to her research.

Audrey shook her head as the night before came back to her. After decorating the tree with Nathan, they had both collapsed onto the sofa with their beers. Audrey had been feeling pleasantly warm and relaxed, and it hadn’t taken long for the exhaustion of the long day to set in. She must have fallen asleep on the sofa and Nathan had put her to bed in his spare bedroom. The thought that her partner had most likely carried her to bed and tucked her in sent a brilliant blush across her face and she buried her head in the blankets again.

They had had one day when the awkwardness had been at an easily tolerable level, but she had a feeling that today would not go quite so well.

“No point putting it off,” she murmured and, with a sigh, shoved the blankets off herself. She shuddered as the cold morning air hit her and she reached over the edge of the bed to grab her jumper from where it was folded neatly on the floor. Tugging it over her head, she folded her arms over her chest and walked out of the spare bedroom.

She was instantly greeted with the smell of warm pine and fresh coffee. Her stomach grumbled in anticipation and she moved faster, speed-walking on the balls of her feet into the kitchen. Nathan was standing at the counter in a pair of flannel pyjama pants and a faded grey tee, gaze distant and distracted as he leant on his palms. He looked up as she walked in and offered a half-smile. “Morning.”

“Morning,” she responded. “Thank you, for letting me stay in your spare room. I guess I was more tired than I thought.”

Nathan shrugged. “Saved me the trouble of driving you home.” He straightened up and reached into a cupboard - a narrow strip of his lower back appeared as he stretched and she hastily glanced down at her feet - pulling out two blue coffee mugs. “Sugar?”

“No thanks,” she said, crossing to the counter island and sitting down at one of the barstools. Nathan poured the coffee and passed one of the mugs to her, taking the seat opposite. She curled her hands around the cup and added, “Give it a minute.” He hummed and set the mug down, propping his elbows on the corner of the counter. “So I was thinking that we should go up and visit that metalworker,” she started. Work was neutral ground; safe. “See what he says about the shelves and if he has a connection to Keller.”

Nathan nodded, idly tracing a finger around the rim of his coffee cup. “It’s our only lead right now,” he agreed. “Won’t get anything back from Bangor on those partial prints until at least Monday. And maybe we’ll get lucky and our welder did some work on the Bucket’s air-con vents or something.”

Audrey shot him a short look at his teasing. Even after all this time, he was still so reluctant to admit that it might be a Trouble until he had complete proof. Although, she reckoned that it was helpful to have him keeping her grounded so her theories and speculation didn’t carry her too far off track. It didn’t stop his scepticism from being annoying sometimes, though.

She took a tentative sip of her coffee and when it didn’t burn her tongue she nodded to Nathan. He acknowledged it with a grateful smile and lifted his own mug. “Right, no rest for the wicked.”

* * *

The O’Donnell Metal Shop was nothing more than a converted garage built next to the owner’s house, the painted sign above the doors chipped and faded. When Nathan and Audrey walked up to the office door, they found a printed sign hanging in the window that read, “If I’m not in the shop, try the house.”

“Trusting guy, leaving his shop open to visitors like that,” Nathan remarked idly as they followed the pavement over to the cottage. They mounted the steps to the porch and Nathan knocked, stepping back beside Audrey while they listened to the sound of movement from inside. After a few seconds, the door opened to reveal a middle-aged man, his auburn hair liberally flecked with grey and his green eyes tired. He stood in the doorway with one hand tucked deep into the pocket of his flannel jacket. “Mr O’Donnell?” Nathan asked.

“Call me Lee,” the man responded. “What’s this about, officers?”

“You’ve heard about the recent deaths, haven’t you?” Audrey asked.

“Course,” he said and nodded. “Everyone’s been talking about it. Keller was a bit of a hero ‘round here; it gets people talking. I knew ‘em both as kids, they were a year older than me in school. What’s it got to do with me?”

“Troy Gaven was killed when one of his shop’s shelves fell on him,” Audrey said, folding her arms and broadening her stance into cop mode. “You were the one who installed the chains on the back of his shelves, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, he had me put those on back in the summer, I think it was,” Lee said pensively. “Look, that was solid work. If that’s how he died, someone must’ve tampered with those chains because that welding could support a full tonne of weight. I double-check everything I do, just in case.” He paused and frowned at them. “Wait, you don’t think I did it, do you?”

“No, the chains were still intact,” Audrey assured him quickly. “It’s not-”

“Dad?” a young voice shouted from inside of the house.

Lee glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “Um, I need to go check on my son. Come in, I suppose. I’ll be back down in a second.” After opening the door a bit wider, he turned around and walked further into the house, vanishing up the staircase. Nathan and Audrey glanced quickly at each other and then she led the way into the small sitting room. They stood just inside of the door, both of them appraising the sitting room curiously.

It was a comfortable, homey place with charming little metal decorations and trinkets on the shelves and tables. The furniture and expensive electronics gave the impression of a bachelor’s flat, but there were random, feminine touches scattered among them. Clearly, there must’ve been a woman in the home at some point, although it didn’t look like she was there anymore since the softer touches were pushed to the back.

Audrey’s eyes drifted to the photographs on the wall and she smiled gently. The majority of them featured a young boy with red-blonde hair and a gratuitous supply of freckles, snapshots of him at various ages from a chubby-cheeked baby to a gangly and bespectacled teenager. A few of them included Lee O’Donnell and others showed a pretty, willowy blonde woman. Lee’s wife, she assumed.

Before she could explore any further, Lee came back down the stairs, running the hand not in his pocket through his hair wearily. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he said. “Charlie’s pretty banged up, he needed his pain medication. So, what else was it you needed? I don’t see how I can be much use to you.”

“Has anyone come to you recently, asking about those chains you installed for Troy Gaven?” Audrey asked. “Maybe asked for a similar project?”

“Nothing really like that,” Lee said and shrugged. “Not in quite a while anyway. Most people prefer to bolt their things down and they usually do that themselves. You said the chains were still intact? What happened then?”

“So no one has shown any unusual interest lately?” Audrey pressed. “You haven’t given anyone information on how to tamper with the shelves to ensure that Gaven would be killed?”

“No, of course not,” Lee said angrily.  “What is this? Why are you accusing me of killing him? I put those chains in to keep him safe!”

“What about your son?” Audrey asked. “Charlie? Does he know enough about your work to give out that kind of information? He might not even have realised what he was doing, if someone-”

“Stop it!” Lee shouted. Colour had risen in his cheeks and he glared at Audrey heatedly. Nathan immediately placed a hand around her elbow and she heard the distinctive click of the snap on his gun holster being released. “You leave my son out of this, Officer Parker,” Lee said threateningly. “You can level all the worthless accusations at me that you want, but you do not bring my boy into this. And if I hear anything about you harassing my son-”

“I’m sorry, Mr O’Donnell,” Nathan cut in, using the hand on Audrey’s arm to tug her back a step. “Officer Parker didn’t mean to imply anything, we’re just trying to follow all avenues of this investigation, just in case.” He glanced pointedly at Audrey and she put on a contrite expression.

“My apologies,” she said. “We’ll get out of your way now. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Nathan steered her out of the house, closing the door sharply behind them. “You’ve really got to stop doing that,” Nathan said, releasing her elbow and falling into step beside her as they walk back down the path to the truck. “One of these days you’re going to piss off a Troubled person and it won’t end well.”

“I’m fine, Nathan,” she said exasperatedly. “Besides, it’s not like he was a suspect. I was just trying to get him worked up, see if he’d let anything slip.”

“Just because he’s not a suspect in his case doesn’t mean he’s not Troubled,” Nathan pointed out as they reached the truck. He was about to say more when they both heard the distinctive crackle and squawk of the dispatch radio. Frowning, Nathan jerked the door open and grabbed the handheld. “Can you repeat that last, Laverne? I was away from the radio.”

“Sugar, you and Audrey should get on down to Pierpont, number 1-8-7,” the older woman drawled. “We’ve got another fatal.”

“Another?” Audrey asked in alarm and she could see the same fear in Nathan’s wide eyes.

“We’re on our way,” he said into the radio and then hauled himself into the driver’s seat, jamming the radio back into its port. Audrey climbed in on the other side and the moment she’d shut her door Nathan threw the Bronco into gear.

They rode in a tense silence, neither of them daring to talk about the implications of another death, toward the far side of town and when they rounded onto Pierpont Avenue they could see two cruisers and an ambulance parked on the street in front of one of the houses. Nathan pulled up to the kerb behind one of the cruisers. He walked purposely up into the house, Audrey close on his heels, and ducked under the police line on the doorframe.

Seddal looked up when they came in and gestured over his shoulder to an arched hallway. “He’s through there.”

Nathan and Audrey nodded their thanks and then slipped down the short hall into a compact kitchen. It was clearly the kitchen of a bachelor, with a few stray dishes and no real decoration or fancy appliances.There was a body crumpled on the floor between the far counter and a small dining table, and the same paramedic from Thanksgiving morning was crouched at the man’s head.

“Ah, Detectives,” he said when he spotted them and gestured them over. “Boy, we’ve been seeing too much of each other lately, haven’t we?”

“What happened?” Nathan asked while Audrey looked over the body. The man was later middle-aged, with dark blonde hair, his blue eyes still half-open in death, and looked healthy and fine apart from the bright red flush of his skin.

“Name’s Myles Lehrmann,” the paramedic - Jim? or maybe Jack? - said. “Forty-two, lives here alone. He called 911 but didn’t say anything, so they sent Seddal out. Bob scared himself shitless when he set the house alarm off coming in. Didn’t do any good, though; poor guy was dead by the time Bob got here. Poisoned. Someone put it in his coffee, I’d reckon.” The medic gestured up to a tipped-over mug on the counter a few feet away, the dark brown liquid puddled and dripping steadily over the edge onto the tiles. “You’ll have to have Jorgenson check for sure, but judging by the redness of his skin I’d bet it was cyanide.”

“Cyanide?” Audrey asked in surprise, looking up from her scrutiny of the coffee puddle. “That sounds like something from an Agatha Christie novel.”

“You’d be surprised how often it actually happens,” the paramedic said grimly. “Causes a lot of accidental deaths every year. It’s found in a lot of chemicals like pesticides, and even in quite a few fruits in small doses. Ingest too much, anything more than about one-point-five milligrammes, and you’ve only got about fifteen minutes before your cells all die of oxygen deprivation. That’s why the skin’s red, you see?”

Nathan put on a glove and picked up the coffee mug, sniffing it tentatively. “Bitter almonds,” he said decidedly. “Definitely cyanide.” He gestured and one of the tech officers took the mug and put it into an evidence bag.

“So another murder,” Audrey said, standing up and staring down at the body with a frown.

“Could’ve been a suicide,” Nathan said. “It’s used in a lot of suicides because it’s easy to get a hold of.”

“Then why would he call the police?” she said and looked up at him.

“Panic,” he replied. “Realised he’d made a bad choice and hoped someone would come save him in time. Either that or to make sure someone found his body. He’s obviously a bachelor, so there wouldn’t be someone else coming home to find him. If he hadn’t called, he could’ve been here for days - weeks even with the cold weather to preserve him - without anyone knowing. And how would someone get in without setting off the alarm?”

“I just think it’s suspicious,” Audrey said and shrugged. “Two days, two murders, and now it’s the third day and we’ve got another dead body here.”

“All around the same age, too,” the paramedic chipped in, straightening up. “Anyway, if you’re done with the body here, we can get him up to the lab and double-check on that poison. Figure out how much he ingested, maybe it’ll tell you if it was an accident or intentional.” Nathan nodded his consent and the paramedic immediately gestured to his companion so the pair of them could load the dead man into a body bag. At the same time, Audrey turned around and crossed the room in long strides.

“Parker?” he asked in confusion, trailing after her. She went through the door on the far end of the room and into the next one, a crowded utility room. The boiler was chugging away slowly and the opposite side of the walkway housed a set of plastic bowls on the floor as well as an enormous bag of dog food. “He has a dog?” Nathan asked curiously. They hadn’t heard any noise from a dog yet and surely it would be making some fuss about all the noise and strangers.

Audrey’s attention, however, was fixed purely on the back door of the house. She walked over to it and crouched down. “A dog flap,” she said and looked up at Nathan like it was the most profound piece of information the universe could offer.

“Yeah, clearly he has a dog,” he replied dryly, pointing to the food bowls for emphasis.

“Yeah, but what’s similar between this scene and the others?” she said. She placed her hand against the plastic flap, which was hardly any bigger than her narrow hand, and pressed it open. Looking at the square of space left behind, Nathan suddenly understood.

“The small opening,” he said in awe. “Just like the window at the bar and the vent at the store.”

“Our shrinking killer could have come in through this door and gone through to the kitchen to poison Lehrmann,” she said, following the imaginary path with her eyes. “Could be in and out without setting off the alarms, and even if the vic heard the flap moving, he’d assume it was the dog.”

“Except we haven’t seen a dog yet,” Nathan remarked.

“Maybe it’s traumatised and hiding,” Audrey suggested, examining the dog flap again. She suddenly winced and stood up, opening the door. “Or it could be right there.”

Nathan stepped up next to her to look through the back door and saw the two small terriers laying in the grass, not moving. “Oh God,” he murmured and went out into the snowy yard. He knelt by the closest dog and checked it over quickly, his expression tight. “Dead. Both of them.”

“The killer probably poisoned them both too,” she said. “So they could get into the house without trouble.”

Nathan stood up and wiped his hands off on his pants. “Let’s have them looked over, just in case, make sure that’s what it was.” He walked back up to join her in the utility room and she saw a flash of sadness in his eyes as he glanced back at the dead dogs. “And then let’s get into the office and see what we can find out about our vic. See if we can find the connection between these men so we can stop this guy before he kills someone else.”


	9. Nostalgia

Audrey and Nathan spent the better part of the morning scouring through Myles Lehrmann’s house for clues as to who he was and what connection he might have to the other victims. They learned from his computer that he was an independent web designer who worked from home and had made something of a small fortune doing it. There were no indications anywhere in the house of there being other occupants so he definitely lived alone and had no regular girlfriend who stayed over occasionally.

“It seems like apart from work and his dogs, he didn’t exist,” Audrey said as she scanned through the dead man’s phone. “There aren’t any pictures of other people in here at all. No siblings, no friends, no girlfriend. Just a handful of pictures of his dogs and him. Did he ever leave this house?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Nathan said, eyeing the extensive film collection in the living room. “One of those guys who survives purely on wifi.”

“Charming,” she said, giving up on the phone after finding the contacts list nearly vacant as well. She tucked the mobile into an evidence bag and pocketed it to take back to the station with them. “And I thought you were anti-social.”

“I’m not anti-social,” Nathan interjected defensively. Audrey cocked an eyebrow at him. “Just don’t like crowds.” She smiled slightly and shook her head, but didn’t argue the point with him. “Let’s check the bedroom, see if there’s anything more in there.”

They hurried up the steps to the bed and bath suite upstairs. As Nathan looked around it, he couldn’t help but think it was precisely the sort of room a bachelor would have. The large bed was unmade, the colour scheme was all monochrome and dark wood. A few articles of clothing had fallen short of the laundry bin in the corner by the bathroom and lay discarded on the floor. A flat-screen television hung on the wall opposite the bed, with an expensive sound system set up on the table beneath it.

“Well this just screams bachelor pad,” Audrey said wryly, stepping over to examine the bedside tables. There were two abandoned glasses, one still half-full of water, and a disorganised stack of papers that she promptly began flipping through.

Nathan went into the bathroom and mapped the place out. It was a large, comfortably sized bathroom with a separate bath and shower each. He opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and found all the usuals - toothbrush and paste, razor and shaving cream, antacids, headache medicine. The shelf in the shower held nothing more than a bottle of shampoo and bar of soap.

“Nothing interesting in here,” Nathan announced as he came out, but then paused and frowned. There was something poking out from between the mattress and box spring. Kneeling down, he pulled out what turned out to be a magazine and glanced at the cover curiously. The next second he looked away, an embarrassed blush spreading over his face.

“What is it?” Audrey asked, looking up from rummaging through the drawer of the bedside table.

“Should’ve known what it was, since he hid it under the mattress,” Nathan said awkwardly. “Bit of a surprise, though.” He lifted the magazine so she could see it across the bed and he watched her eyes widen comically.

“Oh. _Oh!_ Well that explains the lack of girlfriends, then,” she said and a bright pink tinge had lit her cheeks.

“Yeah, a little,” Nathan agreed and tucked the magazine back beneath the bed. That was an image he could’ve lived without, and he cleared his throat uncomfortably before throwing himself back into the search.

“You know even with that, there’s still not a whole lot we know about this guy,” she said, closing the drawer and turning around to appraise the room as a whole. “Other than he really liked his dogs. I mean, he got them these nice, embroidered dog beds, but judging by the amount of fur on the blankets they must have slept in the bed with him. Sound familiar?” she added teasingly.

Nathan shrugged. “Delilah doesn’t have a bed.”

Audrey fought back a smile. “Anyway, we’ve got no leads. He had no social life that we can tell. He worked alone. There’s nothing connecting him to the others.”

“Apart from his age and gender,” he reminded her. “Keller was forty-three, and so was Gaven. Now this guy’s only about a year older. Maybe they knew each other growing up.”

“That doesn’t help us much,” she pointed out. “This is Haven, everyone knew everyone growing up.” She sighed and combed a hand through her hair again. “There’s definitely something about their age that connects them, though. Maybe a country club thing, or some similar place they hang out. Or what about that hockey team they played on in school? I wonder if Lehrmann was on it.”

“Easy enough to check,” Nathan said. “Library keeps a copy of all the high school’s old yearbooks.”

“Perfect, let’s go look at those then,” she said, hastily adjusting her coat. “I think we’ve found all we’re going to get here.”

Nathan followed as Audrey led the way out of the house and back to the truck, throwing herself up into the passenger seat before he had even rounded the front bumper. He struggled to contain a smile as he turned the truck on and headed for the city library. In the other seat, Audrey was half-bouncing with anticipation. He loved it. He loved this side of her, the side that was so eager and excited and determined to solve the puzzles. Even if he didn’t like the Troubles and thought she was too hasty to jump to supernatural conclusions, being able to watch her fight her way through to the answers almost made it all worth it.

It was also nice to see her relaxed again finally, the thrill of having a new case distracting her from the slightly awkward morning. He could tell from the moment she walked out into the kitchen that she was tense and uncomfortable, not sure how to feel or where they stood after the night before.

Nathan, on the other hand, was feeling something like euphoria up until they went to interrogate O’Donnell and Audrey had gotten so reckless. For his part, it had been a brilliant night. Watching her face light up with a childlike expression of awe at the Christmas tree lighting had stirred something inside of him, the same thing that had compelled him to call in a favour with Duke to make her Thanksgiving special. It sometimes escaped him just how many of those fundamental childhood experiences and milestones that Audrey had missed during her strict, turbulent youth at the Catholic orphanage.

So at the conclusion of the ceremony, he had decided to try and give her one more new experience. He hadn’t actually planned to decorate the tree that Laverne’s nephew had delivered for him until Sunday when he didn’t have to work. He’d also never let anyone else in on the tradition since the Chief had stopped participating after his mother’s death. Unpacking all of those family heirlooms and handmade memories had always been a very private affair for him. But there was Parker, who had never so much as owned a Christmas tree, let alone made decorations or hung them on a tree. When it came down to it, he never had put up much of a fight when she began to work her way into the most personal aspects of his life.

The evening had done everything he could have hoped for and more. She had been fascinated by the intricate glass ornaments, charmed by the handmade and oddball additives. He’d even found that it hadn’t hurt so much to go through some of his mother’s favourite possessions the way it had in years prior. Having Parker there, having someone to share the moment and willing to listen to his faded childhood memories, had softened the ache. So they had decorated the fragrant tree to the sounds of comforting classic carols and shared beers while they cuddled Delilah. It had felt oddly domestic.

Just when he had thought the night couldn’t possibly get any better, Audrey had scooted closer to him on the sofa and threaded her hand through his. He had revelled in the feeling, of the way her narrow little fingers fit so perfectly in the curves between his knuckles, expecting the moment to be as fleeting as all of the others. But she didn’t pull her hand away. For the first time since the Sandglass case, she had left her hand in his and Nathan was blissful. They had chatted more, Audrey continuing to press him for stories of Christmas past until she had drifted off with her head on his shoulder. He had stayed there for a while, selfishly enjoying the wonderful feeling of her tucked against his side, their arms aligned, fingers intertwined, and her warm breath ghosting down his triceps.

In the end, he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of waking her, knowing she hadn’t been sleeping well for weeks now, so he had carefully tucked her into the guest bed that she had occupied once before. Before he had left her alone, he had traced a finger along the side of her face, tucking a loose strand of hair behind the shell of her ear lovingly.

Because that was the crux of the matter, the truth that the night had revealed to him. People might think he was completely inept socially, that he didn’t understand emotions and feelings the same way that other people did, but he wasn’t so blind as to not recognise the beautiful warmth that glowed in his chest whenever she was near. He hadn’t been certain before, but he was pretty sure now that he was well on his way to being in love with Audrey Parker.

Nathan pulled the Bronco up to the parking strip in front of the library and took it out of gear. He had barely shut the engine off before Audrey was hopping down into the slush, raring to go. Nathan followed close behind her as she jogged up the short steps into the ancient stone and wood panel building. She paused inside just long enough to get directions to the right section and then she was going again.

They found the shelves full of local public records near the back of the library, and one row was entirely devoted to old, leather-bound yearbooks. Nathan quickly did the math in his head and then grabbed the book with the embossed _1982_ on the spine. “This should’ve been Keller’s first year of school,” he said as he flipped through the pages. After the first half of individual photos, he reached the team photographs, lines of students dressed in matching uniforms.

“God, those clothes,” Audrey said, wrinkling her nose. “Why did anyone ever think those looked good?”

Nathan snorted. “You’re telling me you never wore anything embarrassing when you were younger?”

“I went to a Catholic school,” she reminded him. “I didn’t get much choice in my clothes.”

Nathan felt his mind drift to the idea of Audrey and Catholic school uniforms, and he hastily cleared his throat as heat crawled up the back of his neck. To distract himself, he turned a few more pages until his eyes landed on a photograph of two rows of boys in hockey uniforms beneath a heading of 'Junior Varsity.' “Here, this is it,” he said and held the book out toward her. She pressed up close to his side so they could both examine the photo.

“There,” she said and tapped the picture. “Keller. And that’s Gaven. But is Lehrmann in it?” Nathan’s eyes ran over the list of names beneath the photo, but Myles Lehrmann’s name was not on it. “This is just one year. They could’ve been on it together another year.”

She took the yearbook from him, replacing it on the shelf and grabbing the one from the next year. Her nimble fingers scanned through the pages at top speed and then landed on the page for the hockey teams. Troy Gaven was still in the junior team, Keller had moved up to the varsity, but there was still no sign of Lehrmann.

“I don’t understand,” Audrey said in frustration, snapping the book shut. “This is the best link we have between them.” She shoved the book back into place and snatched up the next one. “I mean, Lehrmann went to this school, right?”

“If he grew up in Haven, yes,” Nathan said. “Here. He was a year older, he would’ve been in year twelve that year.” He scoured the pages of alphabetical school pictures until he found the right one, a photo of a much younger Myles Lehrmann with his blonde hair in a bowl cut, wearing the same black tuxedo as every other senior boy.

“So he went to the school,” she said, taking the yearbook back from him and turning pages. “They were definitely connected in that way. But it has to be more than that. It has to be more than just someone killing off random people who went to the same school. Ugh.” She made a noise of frustration, gesturing to the page. It was another hockey team picture, and Lehrmann was not in it. “This was the last year they were all three in school together. Lehrmann graduated that year.”

“Which means that the only connection we have between them is that they went to the same school around the same time,” Nathan said. “But that doesn’t narrow it down any. There were about a thousand people who also went to school at the same time.” He closed the book and stuck it back onto the shelf. “We should head back to the office, see if we can find anything else out about Lehrmann and how he might be linked to the others.”

“One sec, there’s one more thing I want to check,” Audrey said and scanned the shelf. Nathan’s brow furrowed until she pulled out a yearbook marked _1995_.

“Parker,” he said in exasperation and she just smirked at him over the rim of the book. He braced himself for the inevitable as she turned to the end of the senior class and suddenly let out a short giggle. “Happy now?”

“Your hair was a bit longer then,” she said, glancing from him to the senior year photo in the book. “I didn’t realise your hair is quite so curly.”

“Hence why it’s short now,” he responded dryly. “Are we finished?”

Audrey laughed and closed the book. “Okay, sorry, forgive a girl a little curiosity.” She tucked the book back into the shelf and smiled. “Right, back to the office.”

* * *

The research turned up absolutely nothing and Audrey was starting to get supremely frustrated with this case. The tox screen results had come back and it was, in fact, cyanide poisoning that had killed Lehrmann, but they had learned nothing else from it. She was used to the challenge that the Troubles provided, used to dissecting the answers and breaking down the puzzle, but this one seemed to be particularly difficult. People were losing their lives and the longer it took for her solve the riddle, the more people were dying.

Nathan was tapping away at his computer but she could tell by the frown lines scratched deeply into his forehead that he wasn’t having any luck either. Audrey skated her eyes over his face and felt the corner of her lips twist upward. Despite the awkwardness of the morning, things felt more relaxed between them than they had been since the Sandglass case had ended.

And the image of the lanky, bony cheeked and curly haired eighteen-year-old Nathan wouldn’t leave her mind, threatening to make her break out into giggles again. He was every bit the same awkwardly sweet man she knew, only with fewer lines in his face and less heaviness in his eyes. It was the same way he'd looked last night.

A tap at the door made them both look up and the Chief nodded stiffly. “Got another one? Connected?”

“We think so,” Audrey said, wanting to waylay the inevitable stubbornness-off that would occur between the two Wuornos’ the moment Nathan opened his mouth. “We just haven’t found the connection yet. The last vic didn’t exactly leave us with a lot of avenues to follow.”

“So start around t’ beginning again,” the Chief said, popping a piece of nicotine gum into his mouth. “You checked with the wives yet, see if they knew anything about the new guy?”

“Was just about to do that,” Nathan chipped in briskly. Audrey fought to keep the surprised look off her face; he hadn’t said anything about that before. Then again, odds were he was saying it simply to one-up his father and not seem inexperienced for having not thought of that already. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d done it. The feud between them was so tedious sometimes.

The Chief grunted, looking sceptical but thankfully choosing not to act on it. “Right. The techs said they dusted the house for prints. Nothing but partials, nothing good enough for a match. Said it might not hurt to check the house over again, though. Found some footprints in the snow by the cellar, may be something in there.”

“Thanks, Chief,” Audrey said gratefully, her mind already racing. Had the killer been hiding out in the cellar? Was there some clue down there to who had committed the crimes, or how exactly they’d done it?

“We should get on that,” Nathan said. Audrey blinked and looked up, realising with a hint of surprise that the Chief had left and Nathan was now standing up from behind his desk. “Go ask Keller and Gaven’s wives if they know how Lehrmann fits into this.”

“You go,” she said, jumping up and grabbing her coat. “I want to check the house again. See what’s down in that cellar. We never even bothered to check there this morning.”

“Parker, you don’t have a car,” Nathan pointed out.

“So you can drop me off on your way,” she said simply.

Nathan frowned and she could see the apprehension written in the furrows of his brow. “You sure you should go by yourself? It’s getting dark out.”

“I’ll be fine, Nathan,” she said, struggling to contain her sigh of exasperation. “I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself. Besides, like you said, it’s getting late. This way we can get both jobs done as soon as possible.” She shrugged her coat on and when Nathan didn’t budge, she softened her expression and added, “There’s been one death every day for the last three days. If we can solve this tonight, perhaps we can prevent a fourth tomorrow.”

Her partner let out a heavy breath but obligingly pulled on his coat and nodded toward the door. They left the slowly emptying station and Nathan drove them back to Lehrmann’s house. Before she could get out, Nathan put a hand on hers. “Call me to pick you up when you’re done,” he said, concern driving his already deep voice down another notch. “It’s going to get cold, fast.”

“Don’t worry, I’m all bundled up,” she said, zipping up her coat pointedly and smiling. “I’m just going to check around the cellar and maybe the house again, see if there’s anything we missed, and then I’ll call.” She turned her hand over to squeeze his gently. “Good luck with the interrogations.”

Nathan smirked slightly and she felt his fingers fidget in hers. “Yeah, you too.”

With that, Audrey slipped down out of the truck and started the march around the side of the house. She heard the truck idling for a moment before it shifted into gear and drove up the road, and then a still silence fell over the area. The sun was just setting and she could feel the temperature sliding steadily downward with each minute. Jamming her bare hands - damn, she’d forgotten gloves again - into her coat pockets, she walked around the house in search of the cellar door.

On the opposite side of the house, near the rear corner, she found the pair of small wooden doors set into the foundation. It appeared to have been padlocked at some point, but the lock had been removed and was currently resting on top of the stack of concrete edging blocks beside the doors. There did seem to be some sort of prints in the snow around it but they didn’t look like human footprints. They were narrow, scuffling, and distorted like the owner didn’t have legs tall enough to not drag them through the snow. The steps of a very, very short person? Or maybe just a cat, she rationalised. Either way, it was curious.

Twilight was falling fast and Audrey lamented that she didn’t have her police-issue torch with her. Pulling out her phone, she switched on the app that turned the camera flash into a weak torch. It would have to do for now. Crouching down, she opened the doors to the cellar and shined the light inside. It looked like the average storage cellar, with wooden shelves and garden tools and canned food. Audrey cocked her head to the side, squinting. There were swipes in the dust, a sign of someone recently being in there.

She stood and had just lifted one foot to walk down into the cellar when there was a sudden pull at her other ankle. In a wave of vertigo, she tumbled forward, her mobile flying out of her hand as she fell. Her head cracked against the frame of the cellar doors and blackness had claimed her before she reached the ground below.


	10. Body Heat

Nathan had never been one to believe in premonition or vibes, but as he drove away from dropping Audrey at Lehrmann’s house, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. He wouldn’t be able to convince Audrey of that, though. She was too damn stubborn and proud for her own good sometimes. Besides, she had a point. They needed to solve this case as quickly as possible. If the killer followed their pattern, someone else would die tomorrow, someone from a long list of potential victims that they had no way of narrowing down. They had to stop this before it got worse.

The lights were still on at the Keller’s house when he arrived, and he parked at the kerb before carefully taking the icy path up to the door. He knocked, and there was silence for a minute until the door was opened by Judith Keller, dressed in an over-large flannel shirt that Nathan assumed must have belonged to her husband. “Detective Wuornos,” she said in surprise. “Did you find out who-?” She swallowed hard and blinked. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve heard there’ve been more deaths.”

“Troy, yeah, Mandy called me yesterday,” she said. “She’s actually here now. Please, come in. We can talk inside where it’s warm.” She stepped back to let him into the house and then gestured him through to the dining room. Amanda Gaven was sitting at the table, nursing a cup of what smelled like chamomile tea, and she looked up curiously when he came in.

“Detective, did you find out anything?” she asked hopefully. “It wasn’t just an accident, was it?

“We don’t think so, ma’am,” Nathan said awkwardly. Amanda set the teacup down with a clink and Judith slipped into the chair beside her, indicating for him to sit down opposite. He sat gingerly in the chair, aware of the weight of the two widows' eyes on him. “There was another death this morning, and we feel that with the close timeframe, they might all be connected somehow.”

“Someone did this to Troy on purpose,” Amanda concluded.

“There is evidence that the chains your husband had installed were tampered with,” he admitted. “They were undamaged. Someone had taken them off the shelves, so there was no support to hold them up. That’s why they collapsed.”

“Oh God,” she said, and she buried her head in Judith’s shoulder. “Why would someone do that? It was so horrible, it must have hurt him so badly. Who could be so cruel?”

“You think it was the same person who killed Bart?” Judith spoke up, rubbing her hand across Amanda’s back soothingly.

“We believe so,” he agreed. “Myles Lehrmann was killed this morning.”

“Oh! Poor Myles!” Judith said emphatically, her free hand covering her mouth in shock.

“So you knew him as well?” Nathan asked. Maybe this was it. Maybe they would finally find a link between the three men that might lead them to a suspect or, at the very least, possible future victims that they could keep a watch on. “Was he connected to your husbands in any way?”

“Only in passing,” Amanda said, wiping her eyes and straightening up. “We went to school together; Bart, Troy, Myles and I. Myles was a year older than the boys. They weren’t friends or anything. Myles was a bit of an ass, honestly.”

“Mandy!” Judith scolded.

“Well, he was,” Amanda continued unrepentantly. “He was such a bully, always picking on anyone he could push around. Over-compensating 'cause he was a closet case.”

“So you can’t think of any connection between your husbands and Lehrmann apart from going to school together?” Nathan pressed. “No school groups they were in or places they frequented as adults?”

“Bart and Troy didn’t do anything but hockey in school,” Amanda said and shrugged. “Myles was a bit of a loner, didn’t associate with anyone apart from the people he was beating up. I don’t know if any of them ever spoke a word to each other at all, really.”

Nathan scowled and rubbed his upper lip, despite the hollowness of the gesture. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. “Bart was a regular at the Rust Bucket, did Troy happen to go there often?” he asked, grasping at straws.

“No, Troy never drank,” Amanda said firmly. “His father was an alcoholic, and he didn’t want to go down the same path. Wouldn’t even have a glass of wine on special occasions.”

In his head, Nathan was running through every possible scenario he could think of that might bring the three men together. Keller and Gaven both had children, but Lehrmann didn’t. “They didn’t happen to attend any of the same places, did they?” he asked. “Visit the same doctor, shop at the same stores, anything?”

“Bart hasn’t been to a doctor in at least five years,” Judith said with a watery laugh. “Didn’t trust them after the knee repair went so wrong.”

“And Troy had to buy all of his clothes specially made because he was so tall,” Amanda said, promptly shooting a hole in his last desperate hopes.

“I’m sorry for all of the questions,” he said wearily. “We’re just trying to find out what connects them so we can stop this person before they kill anyone else.”

“Of course, we understand,” Judith said. “Would you like a cup of tea? We can go through any more things, see if something comes up the same.”

Nathan sighed but nodded. “Thank you, that would be nice,” he said. Judith smiled and then walked into the kitchen.

“She’s been so sweet to me,” Amanda said fondly. “When she heard what happened, she reached out to me. And it’s so nice to have someone who understands what I’m going through. It’s good to not be alone. Everyone just keeps telling me how sorry they are, and that Troy would want me to move on, but Judes doesn’t. She gets it, you know. The horrible feeling, the loneliness. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.” She sniffled and blinked back tears, her grip on the teacup white-knuckled.

Nathan hesitated, not sure what to say to that. Instinctively, he felt like he should give her condolences, but she had just said that she was tired of hearing that. Thankfully, he was saved from answering when she went on, “And poor Lily. Our daughter,” she added at his confused look. “She and Troy were so close, she’s completely heartbroken, and I just don’t know how to comfort her. I want to tell her things will get better but that doesn’t change the fact that her father is gone, you know?”

Nathan nodded and found that that was all he was required to contribute to the conversation. Amanda Gaven continued to chat away, sharing her sadness and the troubles she was inevitably going to face as a widow and single mother, and whenever she paused he would simply nod and prompt her on. It seemed like she didn’t care so much how he responded and was just looking for someone to listen, so he gave her that.

Fifteen minutes and the whistle of a kettle later, Judith Keller returned to the dining room with a cup of steaming tea, and she set it on the table in front of him with a soft smile. “So, is there anything else we can think of to help?” she asked.

They spent a long time running through every possible theory that Nathan could come up with, every possible chance that there might be a link between the three dead men. It resulted in absolutely nothing. They came up with dozens of things that two of the three men had in common, but nothing that connected all three. Finally, they admitted defeat when Judith’s parents returned home with her children, and Nathan excused himself. “If you do happen to think of anything your husbands might have had in common with Lehrmann, please give me a call,” he said before he left the Keller house.

It was only as he was getting into his truck that Nathan realised he hadn’t heard from Audrey yet. Scowling, he checked his phone, but there were no messages or missed calls despite the fact that it had been well over an hour since he’d dropped her off. He dialled her number and waited, but it rang through to her voicemail. “Parker, what are you doing?” he muttered aloud, tucking his phone back into his pocket and turning the truck ignition. That feeling of trepidation and uneasiness he had noticed before was back again and worse than ever.

He drove more quickly than was necessarily legal to the opposite side of town where Lehrmann lived. On the way, he called Audrey twice more with no success. By the time Nathan parked against the kerb with a screech of tires, he was nearing to panic. His breath misted in front of him as he jumped down out of the truck, sliding on the icy street, and ran to the house.

“Parker!” he shouted and listened attentively for some response. “Parker!” He checked inside the house quickly, hoping that perhaps she had gone inside to look for some clue and hadn’t heard him, but the house was silent and empty. Back outside, he began walking a circle around the house in search of the cellar she was meant to find. What if the killer had been hiding out in there? What if they had gotten the jump on her? God, if something had happened to her...

He finally spotted the cellar doors, the snow around it trampled by her footprints, and he sprinted over to them. The cellar was locked, a heavy padlock secured through the latch, and there was no sign of Audrey. Except... He knelt down and picked up the little silver object, half-buried where it had fallen in the snow; Audrey’s mobile, with the three missed calls from him blinking on the screen.

“Parker!” His voice broke with pure panic. “Parker, where are you?” He looked around desperately, but no footsteps were leading away from the cellar. Where could she have gone?

His eyes fell on the cellar doors, the wood unburied despite the layer of snow on everything else. They had been opened at some recent point. Reaching down, he pried the doors up as far as they would go with the latch down and shone his belt torch through the crack. The beam fell on wooden steps, a dirty concrete floor, and a single pale hand. “Parker!”

Nathan dropped his torch in the snow and looked around frantically for some tool to break the lock. He grabbed one of the concrete pavers and bashed it against the padlock, once, twice. Snarling, he got a better grip and brought the paver down as hard as he could. The lock fractured and he clawed it off the broken latch, throwing the doors open.

“Parker!” he called, thundering down the steps so fast he slipped and slid down the bottom two stairs. Ignoring his own state, he fell to his knees beside Audrey’s crumpled figure, sprawled ungracefully on the floor. He reached for her face, meaning to check for her vitals, but flinched back at the incredible cold of her skin. “Shit.” Rolling her onto her back, he put his fingers to her throat and waited. The pulse was there, slow and thready, and a quick check showed she was still breathing, but her skin was deathly white, and her fingers and lips were tinged blue.

“C’mon, Parker, wake up,” he said, tapping her cheek lightly. “Open your eyes.” Audrey groaned, and he felt his heart leap into his throat. “That’s it, Parker, wake up for me.”

“N’th,” she slurred through quivering lips, and he could’ve cried with relief.

“I’m gonna get you out of here, okay,” he said, pulling his mobile out with a shaking hand, the other squeezing one of her pale hands to ground her. God, she was freezing. Her temperature had fallen so far already; she must’ve been there for a while. Mild hypothermia at best, more likely moderate. Thankfully, he had lived in Maine long enough to know how to deal with the situation. He hit the speed dial for the station number and waited impatiently for the answer while he stripped off his coat and draped it over Audrey.

“Haven Police Department,” Laverne’s wheezy rasp said through the speaker. “What’s the nat-”

“Laverne, it’s me,” Nathan said, cutting across her. He’d apologise later, but this was urgent. God knew how long she’d already been down here, much longer and... No, don’t think about that. “Get an ambulance to the Lehrmann crime scene, A-Sap. Tell them to bring hypothermia blankets.”

“Right on it, honey,” Laverne said, and she promptly clicked off the line to make his call.

Jamming his phone back into his pocket, Nathan leant in to check on Audrey again. Her eyes were half-open, and she looked dazed. His mind ran through everything he had ever learned in first aid classes, picking out what he could do to help. “Parker, I need you to stay awake, okay?” he said, placing a hand on her frigid cheek.

“Nath’n,” she said, her eyes focusing on him as he bent over her. “S-sss-so c-cold.”

“I know. Helps already coming, they’ll get you warmed up. You just have to hang in there for me. Just a bit longer.” He looked around for some sort of blanket, but there was nothing but tin cans and garden tools in the cellar. “I’m going to get you out to the truck, okay? There’s a blanket in there, and I’ll get you warmed up. It’s probably gonna hurt, though.”

Audrey made a pitiful humming noise, although whether it was voluntary assent or not, he couldn’t begin to guess. He scooped her into his arms as gently as he could, yelping slightly as her freezing forehead fell against his bare neck, and then carried her up the steps. He half-jogged to the truck, trying to jostle her as little as possible. Her skin would be tender and sore from such extreme cold, and her muscles would ache from shivering so much.

Awkwardly opening the passenger door with the hand beneath her knees, he laid her on the bench seat. She instinctively curled up on her side, trying to retain what faint traces of body heat she still had. He dug out the blanket he kept beneath the seat for emergencies and glanced over her coat. He frowned when he spotted a darkness to the fabric along her arm and more of them on her jeans; her clothes were damp from laying on the ground.

“Parker, your clothes are wet,” he said, trying to keep her focus on him and also not wanting to frighten her with what he had to do next. “I need to get them off you, or you’re not going to warm up. Okay?”

She didn’t seem to comprehend what he was saying. Gritting his teeth, Nathan climbed halfway onto the bench beside her and pulled down the zip on her coat. She didn’t fight him as he pried it off, which told him she must have understood him on some level, and he tossed it to the floor. Her shirt sleeve was also wet, and he grimaced as he worked the buttons free and threw that aside as well. She whimpered and gave him a tragic, terrified look through her lashes.

“I know, I’m sorry,” he said and was surprised at the thickness of his own voice. He picked up his coat and wrapped it around her bare shoulders to sustain her for the time being. “Just your jeans and then I’ll get you warm.” He shuddered as his fingers brushed her cold stomach, popping the button of her jeans and sliding them down off her legs, discarding her boots in the process. Her shivering grew worse as she huddled in on herself inside of his coat, but that was good. Shivering meant her body was contracting muscles to generate friction and heat. They weren’t in serious trouble unless she stopped shivering.

Immediately, his hands went to his own jumper, and he peeled it off. He stripped out of his jeans and then climbed into the truck next to her, shutting the door to keep the cold out of the cab. He saw Audrey’s eyes on him as he grabbed the blanket, now wearing nothing but his underwear, and he forced a tight smile. “It’ll help, I promise,” he said encouragingly.

Nathan reached out and pulled her into his lap, not able to stop the horrified gasp at how cold she was. After so many years of nothing, of absolutely no temperatures at all, the ice of her skin was painful. It sent needles and daggers through his flesh, and his heart rate immediately jumped in compensation. It was a glorious, agonising sensation.

Reminding himself that Audrey was feeling that same thing ten-fold, he cradled her in his lap and then wrapped the blanket around the both of them. It created a tent of warmth, his body heat transferring slowly to her through their contact, and he tucked her as close to him as he could manage. He manoeuvred his coat, so it sealed the heat in on her side, and then reached into the pocket and found his keys. Without moving her, he stuck them into the ignition and started the truck, flicking the heater switches to their highest setting.

“You still awake?” he asked, settling his cheek against the back of her neck. Every instinct in him was telling him to rub some warmth into her arms and legs, but he knew that would only hurt her worse. And if, heaven forbid, she’d gotten frostbite anywhere then it would only aggravate the damaged skin. Despite the fact that she was shaking so badly he doubted she could even see straight, he felt her nod her head against his collarbone. “Good girl, you’ve got to stay awake. Can’t fall asleep yet.”

“C-c-could’na ‘f I wanna,” she stuttered. “T-too c-c-col’.”

Those were almost full sentences, meaning she was at least mostly coherent for now. That was one worry off the checklist. “The ambulance is on its way,” he told her, adjusting her slightly, so her chest was more closely aligned with his. Needed to keep those vital organs warm, that was most important. “You’re going to be okay.”

“C-cc-ould r-really uss-se a d-drink-k,” she stammered with a weak laugh.

Nathan smiled against the top of her head. “You stay awake until the medics get here and drinks are on me. Whatever you want. Just stay awake.”

“F-fine. Y-y-you’re sss-so w-warm,” she said and nuzzled her head into his chest, one of her little hands gripping at his side. It almost tickled, and he marvelled at the alien sensation for a moment.

“And you’re freezing,” he responded. It was a small miracle that she was conscious enough to maintain something of a conversation and he was grasped at any chance to help keep her awake. The risk of coma was too great if she nodded off now.

“Y-y-you c-can fe-ee-el it,” she said and he was amazed at what she was implying. How was it that, even in her horrible, near death state, she could still think about him? That she could sound so glad to be able to give him that one thing only she could even while she was freezing to death?

“Yeah, and I would be fascinated if I wasn’t so worried about you,” he said, struggling to keep up the thread of the conversation. Still, he tightened his arms around her to show that he appreciated her concern none-the-less. Before she could respond, his ears caught the sound of salvation, and he sighed in relief. “There’s the ambulance,” he said. “Almost here, Parker. Just stay with me a bit longer.”

“D-don’ le-eave,” she said hastily, half-panicked as she lifted her head to look up at him.

“Never, Parker,” he promised, tucking her back against him as the ambulance pulled up behind the truck and he saw the EMTs hop out. “I’m right here, with you. Always will be.”

She smiled against his collarbone, her lips just brushing his skin as she replied, “M-me too.”


	11. In From the Cold

_Audrey looked around her desperately, searching for some way out. She was surrounded on every side by walls of ice; thick, solid ice that formed an impenetrable barrier between her and the world outside. She didn't even have clothes to protect her, and the cold sank into her bones as she thoroughly investigated each wall in vain. She was trapped. Surrounded. Freezing to death in her icy prison._

_"Parker."_

_Through the ice, Audrey could see a blur of colour, and she hurried across the slippery floor to the spot. She could see a long-fingered hand pressed to the ice on the other side of the wall, the rest of the figure just an indistinct smear of shadows. "Nathan," she said frantically and pressed her hand against the ice over his. "Nathan, I can't get out."_

_"You have to," Nathan responded from the other side. As he said it, Audrey looked down at her own hand and realised that the ice had spread like a plague, forming over the top of her hand and wrist, trapping her in place. She watched in horror as the icy tendrils continued to creep further up her arm, beautiful and sinister clusters of ice crystals sprouting and joining to encase her limb in a rock-hard prison._

_"Nathan, help!" she said in a panic, fighting to pull her arm free even as the ice crawled up toward her shoulder. It was a piercing, stabbing cold that sliced through her like razor blades. "Nathan!"_

_"You've got to fight it, Parker. Hold on. You can do this."_

_"I can't," she said hopelessly, the ice webbing together over her shoulder and collarbone, and then spreading out in every direction. Over her back, her breast, her neck, across to her other shoulder. She looked down at the sharp pain and saw that her legs were trapped up to the knees in thick ice that was defying gravity as it climbed her thighs. "I'm stuck, Nathan, please."_

_"I'm coming, Parker, just hold on a bit longer." The ice had spread across her chest, freezing through to her heart. God, it hurt so much. Every beat of her heart jostled the needles of ice and sent new spasms of pain through her. Every breath brought ice crystals into her, where they attacked her from within as well as without._

_She shook with terror as the icy wall continued to swallow her whole. Fear and bone-chilling cold. The ice burnt as it crept up her neck and over the ridge of her jaw. Her cheeks, her nose, her ears. And then it crawled inward, flooding into her nostrils and her mouth until it was hard to breathe, blinding her as it gouged into her eyes. It hurt, so much pain from every direction. Make it stop, make it end..._

_"Parker!" The shout was loud, stinging her sensitive ears. She just wanted to sleep, couldn't they just leave her alone? "Parker! C'mon Parker...Wake up."_

_Something tapped sharply against her cheek, making her head toss to the side and sending agonising flashes of light through her brain. But wait, how had her head moved if she was trapped in the ice? What had touched her? It hadn't been cold, it wasn't the ice. "Open your eyes."_

_Groggily, Audrey tried to prise her eyelids open but the ice weighed down on them, so heavy. She moaned at the pain it sent through her impaled eyes. "That's it." He sounded so happy, so grateful. Who was that? She felt like she should know. "Parker, wake up for me."_

_Parker. He called her Parker. Of course, she knew who it was. Who else would it be? Who was always there to save her in the end?_

"N'th." Audrey couldn't move her jaw properly, and her tongue felt thick and clumsy, squashing all of the sounds almost beyond recognition. It didn't matter, though. He would know. He always knew. His hand was encasing hers, warm and solid and steady. Nathan had come to save her again, to take her away from the icy prison.

Only it wasn't a prison at all, at least not one made of ice. No, the cold and stiffness, it was  _her_. Her own body was a prison of ice, trapping her in place and chilling her so deeply that it hurt. God, it hurt  _so much_.

She felt like her eyes were open, but she couldn't see anything. It was just a shifting haze of darkness, layers of shadows dancing across each other. One of the shadows loomed closer and spoke. "Parker, I need you to stay awake, okay?"  _Nathan_.

His large, warm hand covered her cheek, and it felt like fire but it was real, and she wouldn't have pulled away even if she could. She squinted and the shadows blurred into colours, sharpened until she could make out the fuzzy pale and pink and blue of her partner's face. "Nath'n," she murmured, proud of herself for managing two whole syllables, despite the effort it cost. She had to tell Nathan, let him know what was happening. If it was a Trouble, he might not know... Might not feel it... "S-sss-so c-cold."

"I know." Audrey relaxed, and the rest of his sentence faded into white noise. He knew. He was going to help her, to make her better, to make it stop hurting. Her vision slipped out, and she retreated inside her head, where she was safe and warm, wrapped in one of Nathan's jumpers and pine and amber and his arms. Nathan. So warm. Safe.

* * *

Audrey came to slowly. Every muscle in her body was protesting the effort of even breathing. She wanted nothing more than to sink back into unconsciousness, but something was dragging her steadily toward the surface. She was powerless to stop it, reluctantly letting it pull her up into the persistent ache of her body.

A pained groan escaped her as the last traces of sleep drifted away, and the full strain of her sore muscles settled over her. Instantly, she heard movement and then something warm and large cupped her cheek. "Parker?"

"Nathan," she breathed in relief. It was Nathan, her partner, the one who had saved her. She hurt, but it wasn't the same hurt that she had been in before. That had been agonising, sharp, deadly. This was heavy and tired and tender, like she'd worked her muscles too hard, but it was liveable. "Hi."

"Jesus, Parker," Nathan responded with an airy laugh. She could feel his breath brushing warm and gentle across her face. Cinnamon and coffee and sweet. Maple syrup.  _Pancakes_. "You gave me a heart attack. When you didn't answer your phone..."

It took a great deal more effort than it ought to, but Audrey forced her eyes open and squinted against the harsh fluorescents. Everything around the edges was nothing but white, but she could make out Nathan's face, less than a foot from hers. Their eyes met, and she watched a wash of emotion roll through those stormy-sea orbs, finally settling on relief. He leant in and pressed a warm kiss to her forehead before drawing away. He slid off the side of her bed – because she realised she was lying in a bed – and perched himself on a chair beside her, taking her hand in both of his.

"You're going to be okay," he said softly, and his tone suggested he was saying it as much for himself as for her. "Doc said you shouldn't have any problems, but you'll be sore for a couple days."

"What happened?" she asked, trying to shift into a more comfortable position but her muscles wouldn't cooperate.

"Hypothermia," he answered. "Moderate. No frostbite even though your hands were bare. That's why I gave you my gloves, you know." Audrey chuckled lightly and then promptly grimaced as it made her sore abdominal muscles twinge. "So are you going to stick to your martinis or are you trying something new?"

"Bit early for drinking, you think?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Because I–" Nathan paused, looking confused. "You don't remember?"

"Remember what? I don't remember much of anything, really." She scowled and reached up to rub her forehead. When she touched the plaster above her left eyebrow, she winced. "I fell and I – I hit my head. And then I remember the cold, and I think I remember you saying my name, and then... that's it."

Nathan frowned and leant forward, placing his forearms on the edge of the bed. "We had an entire conversation," he said, and there was something strained in his voice. "You don't remember any of it?"

Audrey forced herself to think back, searching through the fuzzy gap in her memory. She could recall bits of her dream of being trapped in ice, being woken up and realising that she was freezing, of the relief that Nathan had found her. Then it all faded into darkness again, a blur of shadows and indistinct noises and the ever-present cold. "No, nothing," she admitted. "Why?"

It was like a shutter had gone down behind his eyes, and Nathan abruptly dropped her hand and leant back in the chair. "Nothing, it wasn't important," he said with a shrug. "Just a joke. It's fine."

She didn't get a chance to say anything before there was a light knock that made them both look over curiously. A man in a white lab coat strode in, clutching a clipboard and smiling. "Ah, Officer Parker, you're awake," he said cheerfully. "That's good. How do you feel?"

"Sore," Audrey admitted.

"You all warmed up, though?" he asked, checking a monitor beside the bed. "Yes, looks like you're near all the way back up to a healthy core temperature. You're a lucky lady, you know. You've got a good partner. Much longer and you might not have been fine. According to the EMTs, it sounds like he saved your life. He bought you a bit more time, at least, enough for the paramedics to show up."

Audrey glanced over at her partner, whose ears had gone a lovely shade of red. She knew that he had saved her, but she hadn't realised how close it had been. As he met her gaze, though, there was a flicker in his eyes, a haunted look that she recognised. She'd seen it in the mirror during the Sandglass case and every time since when she'd had another one of  _those_  nightmares. The look of someone who had nearly watched death take someone from them.

The doctor interrupted her thoughts by starting on his checklist to make sure she was all right. He made her answer a few questions to test her memory and coherency, put her through a series of motor skills challenges that made her weary muscles shake, and then checked every last one of her vitals before finally declaring her in the clear. "We're going to keep you overnight and check on you in the morning, but you should be just fine," he said with a kindly smile. "I'll send the nurse in to give you something for the pain and to help you sleep."

With that, he turned on his heel and left the room, and a tense silence boiled up between Nathan and Audrey again. After a moment, Audrey looked up at him and said, "Thank you."

"I did what I had to," he said, shifting awkwardly and not quite able to meet her eyes. "I – You're my partner. I had to do something."

"I suppose I'm lucky you know first aid," she said, trying to diffuse the strain.

Nathan's mouth quirked up slightly on the side. "I'm a cop in Maine," he pointed out dryly. "They make sure we know how to treat people for the cold."

Audrey chuckled. "I guess I missed that class," she said. "I should probably take it."

"Yeah, probably." He rubbed the back of his neck. "What happened, Parker?"

"I fell," she said and then shook her head. "No, something grabbed my ankle. I don't know what it was, though. It wasn't a person. The snow was frozen, I'd have heard it if someone came up behind me." She paused and frowned. "Unless they were very small and light, enough that they didn't crack the ice."

"The killer," he concluded darkly. "Damn it, I knew you should've have gone alone. When you didn't answer my calls, I thought..." he faltered, swallowing hard like he was forcing the words back down. "Don't scare me like that again."

"I didn't mean to," she said.

"You never mean to, but then you keep provoking all of these people, all of these Troubled people. You make yourself a target, and then things like this happen. You could've died, Parker. I thought you were dead."

"But I'm not," she said.

"But you could've been," he snapped back. He scrubbed a hand over his face and stood up, pacing the length of the bed. "They put a lock on the doors. They didn't want to just hurt you, they wanted you  _dead_."

"I'm sorry, okay?!" she shouted, sitting up despite the cries of her muscles, and her cheeks flushed indignantly. "I'm sorry that I scared you. But that's part of the job, Nathan. We risk our lives, that's what we do. You're not the only one who almost lost someone. When the sandglass... I thought you were going to die in that hospital. I was so scared. But you don't hear me shouting at you because you got caught in the crossfire of some Troubled psycho."

Nathan had frozen, and he stared at her with wide eyes, the look of shock on his face almost comical. He opened and closed his mouth twice, and then sank down into the chair again. Not looking up from his hands, he said, "Sorry. I just – I was worried."

Audrey felt the anger rush out of her at his defeated expression. "I know, I'm sorry too," she said. With the rush of emotion gone, the exhaustion settled back into place, and she slumped back against the pillows with a groan, shaking with exertion.

Nathan's head snapped up at the noise, and he immediately stood, leaning over her and fidgeting uncertainly. "God, Parker, are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine, just tired," she said, waving a dismissive hand. Nathan still looked anxious, so she grabbed his hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "I'm fine, Nathan."

A throat cleared from the doorway and they both looked up to see an elderly nurse carrying a syringe. "I don't mean to interrupt, but Miss Parker needs to rest now," she said gently. "The doctor says you can stay, if you'd like," she added to Nathan.

Nathan hesitated, shifting his weight, but Audrey tightened her grip on his hand instinctively. "Stay," she said and then blushed, trying to cover the sudden, inexplicable panic that had filled her at the idea of being left alone in that hospital room. "I mean, if you don't mind." He nodded and sat back down in the chair beside her bed, not letting go of her hand.

The nurse came over and inserted the syringe into the IV attached to Audrey's other arm. "Alright, dear, you get some sleep, and we'll see how you are in the morning," she said and patted Audrey's shoulder. With a kindly smile, she turned and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

"Thank you," Audrey said once they were alone again. "For staying, I mean. I just – I really hate hospitals. If you have somewhere else to be, you can go." Even as she said it, she held onto his hand just a little tighter. She couldn't tell him why she was terrified of being in the hospital - that it conjured too many memories of his slacken face as he collapsed against her; the pure fear in his voice as her name was the last thing he said; the sight of him stark white and comatose in the pale bed; the deeply wrapped bandages around his neck where they'd cut into his skull.

But it seemed like she didn't need to when he returned the pressure on her hand. "It's fine, Parker," he said and smiled. "I understand. I don't like them either." They lapsed into a steady quiet for a few moments, and Audrey felt a fuzzy weightlessness spreading through her as the morphine took effect. Her tense muscles began to uncoil, and she relaxed into the pillows with a lazy smile.

As she lay there and let the drugs soften her body and mind, she felt her eyes drifting to the man keeping a silent vigil at her bedside. His expression was casual and disinterested, almost bored, as he stared down at their entwined hands, but months of experience had taught her better. There was a particular slump of his shoulders, a set of lines around his temples, and a look in his distant eyes: it was a look she'd seen once before, the day Jess Minion packed up and trod on his heart as she headed out of town.

"Nathan?" she prompted gently, a burr of sleepiness in her voice that she didn't remember being there before. He glanced up, an eyebrow lifted in silent question. "You sure you're okay?"

"Fine," he said, almost as if by instinct, and she narrowed her eyes at him sceptically. "Long night," he relented.

"Didn't answer my question," she pointed out.

His lips curved into a diagonal slash and he puffed out a soft laugh. "Good observation, detective," he teased. She squeezed his hand, and he sighed. "I will be," he finally acquiesced. "I'll be okay. Always am. Always will be." For some reason, he said the final words with a sardonic twist that felt like a knife cutting through the air. Before Audrey could ask what he meant, he leant back in the chair and offered her a weak grin. "You can barely keep your eyes open."

"It's fine," she said even as the gravitational pull on her eyelids seemed to triple. A foggy haze had slunk into her brain, and the pull of exhaustion and medication was getting harder to resist with every second, but she was fighting it. Something was wrong with Nathan, and she needed to know what it was. She couldn't shake the feeling that it was something she'd done, that she had been the one to put the bitter resignation in his tone. "Nathan..."

"You heard the doc," he said and cradled her hand in both of his. With the pad of his thumb, he began rubbing gentle circles into the inside of her wrist that felt so relaxing and comforting and good. "Sleep, Parker. I'll be here when you wake up."

And she couldn't fight it any longer, letting herself slip into the morphine-induced mist.


	12. Scars and Desperation

She doesn't remember. As much as Nathan tried to focus on other things - on his relief that she was okay or even his rage against the person who'd done this to her - his mind kept drifting back to that fact. She didn't remember a single thing that they had talked about after he'd found her in that cellar. It wasn't all too surprising, really. She'd been near death at the point, probably delirious, and just speaking out of some subconscious instinct. That didn't do anything to stop the horrible sinking sensation in his chest.

He had all but finally admitted his feelings to her and she had returned them. Except she hadn't said it with a clarity of mind. She may not even have meant it.

Nathan looked at his partner's sleeping face and sighed heavily. How was he supposed to just keep going on as if that conversation hadn't happened? As if he hadn't given her a promise to always be by her side? As if she hadn't said the same? A rush of indignation welled up in him, and he balled his hands into fists in his lap. Why could things never work out for him? What had he done to deserve to have his heart broken over and over again like this? He couldn't just put this aside and act like nothing had changed for him.

Only he had to because he would rather live in this painful limbo than risk not having her in his life at all.

Wearily, he propped his forearms on the edge of the mattress and laid his head on the crook of his elbow. It was already one in the morning and the adrenaline of the night had washed away, leaving him bone tired. His free hand grasped Audrey's tiny, pale one, his fingertips resting on the shallow indentation of her wrist where he could feel her steady pulse point throbbing. With that cadence setting pace for his mind like a metronome, he slowly drifted off to sleep.

The door to the hospital room opening sharply several hours later jerked Nathan back to reality. He lifted his head to see Duke stumble into the room, a nurse at his heels saying, "Sir, you can't just-"

"Jesus, Audrey," Duke said when his eyes fell on her unconscious figure.

"Sir, really, you-"

"It's okay," Nathan said, intervening on the smuggler's behalf. "He can stay. It's police business," he added when she continued to look hesitant. She scowled but nodded and left the room.

Duke walked up to the opposite side of the bed, his face pale and slacken. "She okay?"

"Fine, just sleeping now," Nathan responded.

Duke's eyes flicked up to Nathan, and he scowled, a look of indignant rage on his face. "You could've at least called me, let me know what happened."

"Keep your voice down," Nathan hissed. He grabbed the other man by the arm and dragged him to the far corner of the room, hoping their voices wouldn't wake Audrey.

It seemed like Duke hadn't even noticed, continuing on as if nothing had happened. "No, instead I have to find out when your kid rookie cop shows up at the Gull and starts questioning me."

"I was preoccupied," Nathan pointed out dryly.

"Yeah, well you're not the only one who cares about her, Nathan," Duke snapped, his face flushed. Nathan stared back in surprise, and it took him a moment to place the look in Duke's eyes. Panic. Before he could do anything, before he could even think of apologising, the other man let out a heavy breath and said, "What happened?"

"Hypothermia," Nathan said quietly. "She was investigating a crime scene, got trapped in a root cellar. A couple stitches where she hit her head." He rubbed his upper lip thoughtfully. "We were lucky, we got her here in time, and they got her warmed back up. Doc says she'll be okay in a couple days."

"Jesus." Duke ran a hand through his hair. "And you found her?"

Nathan nodded. "Wasn't answering her phone, I knew something was wrong. It's a miracle I got there when I did, and even then it was too close." He shuddered as the image of her laying in that cellar, pale as snow with a great red gash on her forehead, came back to him. "Thought she was already dead when I found her. Couldn't even risk the drive to the hospital, had to just keep her from freezing until the ambulance showed up."

"How'd you manage that? I know for a fact the heaters in your truck are worthless." Duke looked at him appraisingly, and then he smirked. "You got naked and snuggled, didn't you?"

"We weren't naked," Nathan protested, and even though he couldn't feel it, he knew his face must be going red by the laugh that burst out of Duke. "Shut it, asshole, it was that or let her freeze."

"That must've been a feeling and a half for you, all that skin-to-skin," he said in amusement. Nathan paused, confused. He'd never told Duke... "Yes, Pinocchio, I know you can feel her."

"How?"

"I was there when she found out," Duke said, shrugging. "When you went all Helen Keller but could magically feel her touch. Yeah, that was a plot twist."

Nathan bit back a groan. He had been hoping to keep the whole thing a secret between himself and Parker, and Duke was the last one he wanted knowing purely because of this; the mocking. Trying to divert the attention, he said, "I was more worried about the fact that she was a human icicle."

Duke nodded and glanced over at her again, seemingly watching the steady up and down of her heart monitor. "Thank God she's alright," he breathed, and Nathan wasn't even sure the smuggler knew he'd said it aloud. They stood there in silence for a moment, listening to the patterned beeps of medical machinery, before Duke turned back to Nathan with a smirk. "So, did all that spooning finally get you two to admit that you want to jump each other's bones?"

"Duke," Nathan said warningly, his hackles rising at both the insinuation and reminder of the conversation that had, for all intents and purposes, never happened.

Duke's eyes widened. "My God, it did!" he said in a whispered shout. "You finally told her, didn't you? It's about damn time, the sexual tension between you two is disgusting, makes it difficult to be around you, really. Way to man up, Tin Man."

"Except she doesn't remember it," Nathan growled.

"What?" Duke's smile fell and his brow furrowed, and if Nathan didn't know better, he'd have thought it was genuine concern on the other man's face. "What do you mean, she doesn't remember?"

Nathan shifted. He didn't want to talk about this, especially not to Duke Crocker, but the truth was threatening to burst his ribcage from inside and he needed to say it. To someone, anyone. "She was delusional from the hypothermia," he explained, the frustration seeping out of his voice and leaving nothing but desolation in its wake. "She doesn't remember anything we said."

"But she still said it, right?" Duke asked. "So you know it's there. Just tell her again."

"I can't," Nathan said, and his eyes flashed as he looked up at Duke. "And neither can you. She wasn't in her right mind; she might not have meant it. I'm not going to risk our partnership on something that might not be real."

"You've got to be kidding me," Duke said, throwing his arms up and rolling his eyes. "Are you really that stupid to think she doesn't love you? You're a dense idiot. She killed for you, Nathan. She almost shot Jimmy Daley just for suspecting that he was hurting you. And that sandglass nutter, as soon as your glass fell and she thought you were dead, she killed him."

Nathan frowned. "What? No, the sandglasses backfired," he said in confusion.

"No, that's what she told everyone," Duke said and his expression went grave. "She tore that man apart, Nathan. Once she realised that smashing a sandglass took the life back that he'd stolen, she shattered every one of those things. She thought you were dead and she was out for blood. It was - well, let's just say I'm not getting on her bad side again."

Nathan looked across the room at his sleeping partner, her rosy-cheeked face relaxed and serene. She looked so soft, so delicate. Was it true that she'd intentionally taken a man's life for him? And yet he remembered her confession over Thanksgiving dinner of nearly shooting Jim Daley, of the intensity of her gaze as she said it. He knew what she was telling him; I would have done it for you. "Why? Why would she lie about it?"

"The same reason you aren't going to tell her about your naked cuddle session," Duke said exasperatedly. "You're both completely stupid. You both love each other and don't want to say it first in case the other doesn't. So get on with it before I do it for you."

"Don't," Nathan said, shaking his head. "You can't tell her. Just - let me do it in my own time, okay?"

"Fine, so long as it gets done sometime soon," Duke said. "The sex pheromones coming off you two are seriously nauseating."

Nathan shot a sharp look at him, but it eased slightly when he saw the fond look on Duke's face as he watched Audrey sleeping. He had to know. "I always thought that you, you know - that you were into her."

"I am," Duke said, not taking his eyes off Audrey's face. "But she loves you. As long as she's happy, I'll be okay."

Struck by the sincerity of the statement, Nathan reached out and gripped Duke's shoulder in an awkward attempt at compassion. Duke chuckled and rolled his eyes at the gesture, but didn't shake him off. He looked over and smirked. "You look exhausted, Nate. Go back to sleep. I won't interrupt your nap this time."

Nathan shook his head and dropped back into his chair by Audrey's bed, and Duke grabbed an extra chair from the hall and sat down next to him. Nathan slumped in the chair, ready to nod off, and then something stuck out in his mind that made him open his eyes again. "Duke, you said Michaels came by and was questioning you?" he asked curiously. "What for?"

"What, no one decided to tell the detectives what happened?" Duke asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Must've left my phone in my truck," Nathan replied, searching the pockets of his jacket and finding nothing.

Duke nodded. "Well, apparently a guy that was at my bar earlier this evening died," he explained. "He and his wife were in a car accident; he died and she's in bad shape. They thought it was nothing but then they found out the brake line was cut. They came to ask me if I had noticed anyone hanging around them or paying them any special attention. Hard not to pay attention to them, really, with how far their tongues were down each others' throats."

"Wait, another murder?" Nathan asked, straightening up in his chair in alarm.

"That's what they're thinking," he replied. "Andrew Costas."

"Shit," Nathan said and dropped his head into his hands. "That's four now."

"You think it's connected to those others?" Duke asked.

"It has to be," Nathan said. "Four murders in as many days. Christ, Duke, we've got a Troubled serial killer in Haven." He stood up and held out a hand to Duke. "Give me your phone. I've got to call the office."

Duke passed the mobile over without a word and Nathan walked out into the hall, already dialling the number for the station. Twenty minutes and an in-depth conversation with Laverne later, he returned with a look of pure exhaustion on his face.

"Well?" Duke asked when Nathan handed his mobile back and slumped down into the chair again.

"They've already packed up the crime scene and gotten everything sent off," Nathan said. "They found some fingerprints but they look like the same partials we've gotten at the others, so they're not enough to ID anyone."

"You found just partial prints at all the scenes?" Duke asked suspiciously. "How does someone commit four murders and manage to leave only partials at all of them? Wouldn't they have slipped up and left at least one full one somewhere? Or why not wear gloves, so they don't leave any?"

"Not sure," Nathan said, looking down and examining his own hand. How did someone leave the same partials at every crime scene? How did they manage to imprint only the same exact part of their fingerprint each time? He picked at a bit of dried skin on his knuckle where the scratch from Audrey's fingernail was already starting to scar. It would be just another of the numerous scars on his hands in another day or two. His right hand had a surplus of scars, the skin smooth and red where the fire-starting teen Matt West had tried to melt his gun in his hand. In fact, he could only make out half of the print on his forefinger, the trigger having burnt away the middle of the whorl...

"Scars," Nathan said on sudden inspiration, staring at his palm in awe.

"Come again?"

"That's what's causing the partials," Nathan went on. "Scars. That's how he's leaving the same partial prints at every scene. He's only got partial fingerprints because of scarring. See, like this," he held his hand up and pointed to the patches where the burns had erased his fingerprints.

"So you're only picking up what's left of his fingerprints," Duke said slowly, working through the detective's process. "Of course. Great. So that just narrows the suspect field down to anyone who has ever burnt themselves."

"It's more than we had to go on before," Nathan replied. He leant back in the chair, his eyes drifting to Audrey. If she were awake, she'd be able to help him puzzle this out. There had to be some significant clue that he'd missed in the whole thing. He didn't know how he'd ever done his job before she'd come into his life; nothing helped him work through complicated cases more than bouncing ideas back and forth with her. They worked best together, and with her out of commission, he felt impotent and useless. To solve this case, he needed her help.

"If you need to go into the station," Duke said, apparently picking up on the contemplative look on Nathan's face, "I'll stay with her."

Nathan shook his head immediately. "No, there's nothing I can do until all of the labs come back in the morning," he said. "They're running tox screens on Costas, just in case, and they're having a mechanic go over the car as soon as the shops open. Besides, I told her I'd be here when she woke up."

Duke laughed and settled back in the chair, stretching his legs out and crossing his ankles. "All right then, one night of sleeping in a plastic chair it is," he said and propped his head on the back of the chair, his eyes drifting shut. Nathan rolled his eyes at the other man, even though he wouldn't see it, but he was smiling as he folded his arms on the side of the mattress and laid his head down. After all, he needed to be awake enough to solve the case in the morning, before anyone else lost their lives.


	13. Clearing the Air

"Absolutely not, Parker. You're not going."

"I wasn't asking your permission, Nathan," Audrey replied, folding her arms over her chest defiantly. "I was asking if one of you would tell me where they stashed my clothes so I can get back to work."

"You are _not_ going into work," Nathan argued. He widened his stance and tried to pull the intimidating cop pose on her, but Audrey just rolled her eyes. She's watched him use it on far too many suspects for it to work on her.

"The doctor cleared me to leave," she pointed out from where she was perched on the edge of the hospital bed.

"No, he giving you to go _home_ on bed rest," Nathan said firmly. "Not go back to active duty. And if you're not going to stay in bed like you're supposed to, then you're staying here."

Audrey's eyes flashed as she scowled at him. "We are in the middle of a serial murder case. There was another murder last night. I am not going to just lay around and do nothing!"

"And you almost died last night," Nathan said more insistently. "You're in no shape to be working."

"You have no idea how much it pains me to say this," Duke chipped in, "but I'm actually with Nathan on this one." Under any other circumstances, the look of surprise that flickered briefly across Nathan's face might have been hilarious, but it only made Audrey frown harder because it meant that she had lost her only ally.

"I'm not going to do _nothing_ ," she said. In a show of defiance, she slid off the edge of the bed. Her feet hit the ground and, completely unprepared for the weakness in her aching muscles, her legs promptly buckled and sent her pitching forward. Nathan hissed out a curse as he scrambled to grab her around the waist, stopping her from collapsing by putting his own body in the way. Audrey let out a frustrated growl into his chest as he straightened her up and then guided her back to sit on the bed.

"You okay?" he asked, giving her a hasty once-over for injuries.

"No," she said in irritation. "People are getting murdered right, left, and centre, and I can barely stand on my own feet! I'm completely useless. So no, Nathan, I am _not_ okay."

"Hey." Nathan gripped her shoulders firmly. "You are never useless. Look, we'll pick up copies of the case files, and we can go over all the details again, see what we've been missing. And you can do that just fine from a bed."

Audrey let out a short burst of cursing under her breath before she heaved a sigh and nodded. It was the best she was going to get, in her situation. "Fine, okay, let's just go," she said and lifted her head again, trying to give the impression of strength. It was difficult when fatigue was already trying to drag her back under even though she'd only been awake for an hour now. "I want out of this place."

Nathan nodded and released her, still watching her tentatively like he expected her to crumple again. Once he seemed satisfied that she wasn't going to end up on the floor, he grabbed the plastic sack from the bedside table containing her belongings. "Do you need-?" The pink of Nathan's ears was delightful and eased the knot of anger and frustration in Audrey's chest.

"No, I'm fine," she said and accepted the bag, digging in it for her wrinkled and dirty jeans from the day before.

"Right. We'll be just outside," Nathan said, gesturing at the door to the room. "If you need anything." He shuffled in place for a moment, then turned and walked stiffly out of the room. Duke shrugged at her, making a face, and followed him out.

Audrey pulled out the jeans, frowning at a stain along the left hip. Damn, and they were her favourite too. Perched awkwardly on the edge of the mattress, she dragged the jeans up her legs until they reached her hips and then she hesitated. The last time she'd tried to stand she'd nearly wound up with a faceful of linoleum, but like hell was she going to let Duke or Nathan help her put on her pants.

Clutching the handrail on the bed tightly, she slid down onto the balls of her feet. Her legs strained and the muscles burned, weak and achy, but she managed to stay on her feet. Letting go of the bar with one hand, she gingerly worked the jeans up over her hips and then pulled up the zip. The button would have to wait until she was sitting.

Getting back up onto the bed was out of the question, so she grabbed the bag and dropped down into the chair Nathan had been occupying all night. It was infuriating just how good it felt to sit down and not be using her muscles. She bit back a scream of frustration, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes to ward off the itching burn that was threatening them. She couldn't afford to be so completely useless when things in Haven had never been more dangerous.

Audrey took a deep breath and powered through the pain to get her shirt changed and her shoes - her socks were missing - and coat on. By the time she had finished she was shaking but satisfied. Mind over matter, she told herself proudly. She was rummaging through the last few things in the bag - her belt, holster, badge - when there was a tentative knock at the door. "Parker, you okay in there?"

"Fine," she said. "You can come back in."

Nathan slipped back through the door, Duke on his heels, and approached her. "You ready then?" he asked. She could tell by the frown lines in his brow that he was still reluctant to even be letting her leave the hospital. It was equal parts sweet and irritating.

"Yeah," she said, closing up the neck of the bag. She wasn't going to bother trying to get everything back on her belt and into her pockets, it wasn't worth the effort. But there was one thing... "Where's my phone?" she asked.

"S'not in there?" Nathan asked in surprise.

"No, I figured you had it," she responded. "You don't?"

"No. Must've been left at the crime scene," he said apologetically, checking his pockets once more just in case and coming up with nothing. "I found it by the cellar doors but I must've dropped it again when I found you. Sorry."

Audrey sighed. "Sitting in the snow all night, it's definitely dead," she said. "Damn, this town is making me go through phones fast."

"I've probably got a spare at the Rouge I can lend you until you get a new one," Duke offered. Audrey looked up, and he must've seen the snarky comment coming because he smiled and added, "I'll make sure this one isn't pink."

Nathan walked over to the corner nearest the door and returned pushing a hospital-standard wheelchair in front of him. He took one look at the repulsion on Audrey's face and fixed her with a pointed stare. "We're three floors up, and you couldn't even stand on your own," he said and then gestured to the chair with a hand. "Besides, it's hospital policy."

Audrey made a point of sounding resigned and put-upon as she moved from the plastic chair to the uncomfortable wheelchair, but honestly, she was grateful. As much as she might try to deny it, she definitely was not ready to walk quite so far just yet. She put the bag in her lap and then Nathan began pushing her out of the room.

She could tell as they moved down the hallway that he was being particularly careful, keeping them dead-centred in the corridor and moving with precise, measured steps. "I won't break, you know," she said, glancing up at him.

Nathan frowned. "I can't even feel the handles of this chair," he said flatly. "Just making sure I don't tilt you over or anything."

"Do you want me to take over?" Duke asked. Nathan gave an unintelligible grunt but didn't release the chair, so Duke took it as a no and backed off.

They finally reached the lift, and the three of them rode down with two nurses in floral scrubs who got out on the first floor. At ground level, Nathan pushed Audrey out through the doors and then hesitated.

"I'll drive you guys to the Bronco," Duke offered, pulling his keys from his pocket. He didn't even wait for the affirming nod Nathan gave before turning and jogging down the row of parked cars. They waited in a tense silence until Audrey huffed and twisted in the chair trying to look back at her partner.

"Okay, Nathan, what gives?" she said, the effect of her glare ruined by the fact that she was twisted around sideways and tilting her head back just to see him. "It's not like things haven't been weird between us for a while, I know they have, but something's different. What happened?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, clearly hedging and not meeting her gaze.

"I mean the fact that you can't even look at me without looking like you're in pain," she said waspishly. He had let go of the handles of her chair, so she grabbed one wheel and pivoted herself to face him. She still had to crane her head back to see his face, but at least she wasn't bent around like a pretzel. "What's changed?"

"Apart from you nearly dying?" he asked sarcastically, his brow pulling down into a sharp V. "Do I need more reason than that to feel a bit off?"

"Yes," she said passionately. "Because this doesn't feel right, Nathan. As horrible as this tension was before, it feels different now. You're my partner, I know when something's bothering you."

"Drop it, Parker," he said, his voice half a growl.

"Is this something to do with those drinks you mentioned?" she pressed. "I'm sorry I don't remember that, but we can still go get drinks. I mean, we do that all the time."

"Seriously, just let it go," Nathan said.

"Talk to me, Nathan, we're partners."

"You're not just a partner to me," he finally snapped, wheeling to face her. Audrey felt herself drowning in the intensity of his eyes, the blue-grey watery and focused entirely on her. She felt more than she heard the meaning of his words, and her breath caught in her chest as her heart suddenly seemed to fill all of the space left in her ribs. After a moment he seemed to realise what he'd said and his gaze dropped, his shoulders slumping as he let out a sigh. "That's what's my problem, Parker. You're more than a partner to me. Happy?"

Half-hysterical laughter escaped Audrey as she struggled to wrap her brain around what had happened. "Yes," she said sincerely, the laugh fading into a smile as she looked up at him.

"What?" Nathan asked, frowning in confusion.

"Yes, I am happy," she reiterated. She laughed again, genuinely this time. "Of course I'm happy."

"Yeah?" His head tilted to the side, a look of endearing surprise on his face, and Audrey wished she could reach him to kiss him senseless in that moment. She settled for reaching out and taking his hand, threading their fingers together.

"Yeah," she responded with a grin. "You?"

"Yeah," he agreed, squeezing her hand gently. "I am now."

"Good," she said with a definitive nod.

A second later, the rumble of an engine jerked them back to reality as Duke pulled up against the kerb in front of them. "Help me up," she said, holding her other hand out for Nathan to take. He grasped it and tugged gently, pulling her to her feet against his side. Her legs were quivering but she wrapped an arm around his waist and used him as a crutch, hobbling to the passenger door which Nathan opened for her. Audrey managed to get in the seat, half on Nathan's strength and half on her own.

"You look chipper," Duke noted as she settled in the seat and Nathan went to return the chair to the hospital.

"Shut up," Audrey said, her cheeks burning as she swatted at him playfully.

"What? I was just making an observation," Duke said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. Still, he gave her a significant look and smiled, and she returned it gratefully. She wasn't obtuse, she knew that the smuggler had been attracted to her at least at some point, and she could tell now that he was giving his blessing. As her only real friend aside from Nathan, she was glad to have it.

"Thank you," she said, squeezing his forearm.

"I didn't do anything," he said flippantly but he nodded. He turned his attention back to the steering wheel as Nathan climbed into the back of the jeep. "Right, welcome to Crocker Cruises," he announced in a cheery tone. "First stop, the Rouge. Please keep hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times."

Nathan gave an exasperated huff from the back as Audrey fought a laugh. "Duke, we're on a case," she reminded him. "Time-sensitive. Could we-?"

"Going," he said and shifted the jeep into gear. They drove away from the hospital and down toward the ocean, following the coastal road to the marina. Duke parked and disappeared into the Rouge alone, and reemerged five minutes later with a compact black mobile in his hands. "Here, not a princess phone," he said when he'd gotten back into the jeep, handing the mobile to her. "Just need to transfer your card over from the old one and you should be good to go."

"Thank you, Duke," she said, examining the phone curiously before tucking it into the pocket of her jacket. "Your smuggling is helpful sometimes."

"Hey, I paid for that, thank you," he countered defensively. Audrey raised an eyebrow and he amended, "Well, mostly. I paid the customs, at least."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Nathan said from the back seat.

"I knew you liked me," Duke teased, turning the jeep back onto the main road and curving around back toward the residential areas.

"Don't push it," Nathan replied wryly.


	14. The Final Chips in Play

The Bronco was parked at an awkward angle against the kerb in front of the Lehrmann house, clearly parked without much regard for standard driving rules. A dusting of snow was glistening on the blue paint from the night, hoarfrost clinging to the windows. Nathan went over to unlock the doors and moved the discarded blanket he had used to keep them warm into the middle of the bench. While he started the engine and turned on the defrosters, Duke helped Audrey out of the jeep and to the Bronco.

"I'll go find your mobile," Nathan said once they had gotten Audrey up into the passenger seat of the Bronco. "Wrap yourself up until the heaters get warmed up."

"Yes'sir," Audrey replied with a teasing smile, mock saluting him.

Nathan smirked and rolled his eyes before turning and heading around the side of the house. It wasn't difficult to find the cellar doors this time, following the tracks he had left behind the night before. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, looking down into the open cellar. In the midday light, he could see the streak of blood on the cement edging of the opening as well as the dark, discoloured dirt where she had been lying on the floor. The images from the night before hovered at the edges of his vision, of Audrey's pale face streaked with dirt and blood, her lips and eyelids blue with cold.

Shaking his head, Nathan turned away from the cellar and started searching through the snow around him for the mobile. He sifted through the upturned piles of snow until he finally unearthed the silver phone near a stack of terracotta pots. He pocketed it and walked back toward the Bronco. As he neared it he passed Duke, who was heading back to his jeep with a mischievous grin on his face.

"I'm headed back to the Gull," he announced. "Need to get things set for the evening. I'll check up on her later." His smirk widened and he added, "Have fun."

Nathan frowned at him, confused by the amusement in the smuggler's face, but he nodded and went around to the driver's side of the Bronco. He climbed in and shut the door with a snap. "Found it," he said, offering the mobile across the bench to her. He paused when he saw the look of wide-eyed surprise on her face and he followed her gaze.

There on the floor at her feet were a handful of discarded clothes that he hadn't bothered with in his haste to get her to the hospital, including both of their pairs of socks, her overshirt and fur-lined hat, and his henley shirt. In his haste to get her to the hospital, he hadn't bothered grabbing anything more than the essential things.

Panic flooded into him as he realised what she must be thinking, seeing their clothes scattered across the floor and his concern over whether she remembered the night. "It's not what it looks like, Parker, I swear," he said hastily.

"That's how you kept me from freezing," she said and he could see the wheels in her mind turning as she worked through it. "This is what the doctor meant, that you kept me warm until the medics arrived. Duke said the best way to deal with hypothermia is to share body heat. That's what you did."

"I was just trying to keep you from freezing, I promise," he said. God damn Duke. That explained why the smuggler had been so amused as he left. 

"God, Nathan, that must've been so cold for you!"

Nathan blinked twice and shook his head slightly, thinking he must've missed a step somewhere, and the best he could manage was a strangled, "huh?"

"How did you manage it?" she asked in awe. "It was so cold for me, it hurt so badly. You would've felt that too, and it must've seemed so much colder for you."

"Uh, not the reaction I was expecting," he said slowly.

Audrey laughed and he felt the tension in his chest immediately lessen. "Nathan, you saved my life," she reminded him. "It's not like I'm going to be mad for the way you did it. I just - you didn't get frostbite or anything, right?"

This time, it was Nathan's turn to chuckle. "Parker, if you didn't get frostbite, I definitely didn't," he said.

"Oh, right," she said, her cheeks colouring. "Just because it would've felt colder to you didn't mean it actually was. I knew that." She toyed with the blanket that she'd draped across her lap for a moment and when she looked back up at him again there was a grin on her lips. "Boy, if I'd known that was all it took to get your clothes off..."

Nathan simultaneously inhaled and laughed, which sent him into a fit of coughing. It took him a minute to get his breathing back under control while Audrey giggled. He glanced across at her and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Uh, we should get to the station, get those files," he said, his voice still hoarse from coughing.

Audrey smiled but she nodded resolutely. Nathan drove them to the station and then ran inside to gather up the stack of files that were waiting on their desks. He dropped into dispatch to tell Laverne where he was going on his way out, and then jogged back to the idling truck. He climbed in and set the folders on the bench between them, and then glanced up at Audrey and stopped short. While he'd been inside, she had pulled on his green henley beneath her coat. Something inside of his stomach lurched hungrily at the sight of her in his shirt and his lips quirked up.

"I have a feeling I'm going to be gradually losing the contents of my closet with you around," he said, shifting the truck into drive and turning them toward the B&B.

"I was cold," she said breezily but he could tell by her smirk that she was lying. "So, the newest murder," she said, picking up the top folder and opening it curiously. "Andrew Costas, forty-four. Spent the evening with his wife, Megan, at the Gull. While driving home the car went out of control and they drove into a wall. Andrew was killed instantly, severe head trauma. Megan is in intensive care with broken ribs, a shattered fibula and tibia, and massive internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen. First impression was DUI but it turns out the brake line had been cut, leaving the car incapable of slowing while taking the turn on McMichaels."

"So someone planned it," Nathan concluded. "Murder committed from a distance, simple and elegant. Sounds just like our serial killer's MO."

Audrey nodded grimly. "Tox came back, they'd both had some alcohol but Andrew wasn't over the legal limit. Nothing else interesting stuck out." She flipped through the next few pages and then hummed. "Looks like the search of the car turned up more. Not only were the brakes cut, but the driver's side airbag was dismantled as well. He died instantly when his head hit the steering wheel and crushed his skull."

"The husband was the target then, not the wife," Nathan said. "Another mid-forties male." He pulled the truck into the car park in front of the B&B and turned off the engine. He jumped out, his boots making a loud crunch on the ice that hadn't melted yet beneath the layer of rock salt, and walked around to the passenger side. "Careful, slippery," he warned as Audrey opened the door.

She held out her hands and he took them, helping ease her down to the ground. She wavered unsteadily on her feet and he instantly threw an arm around her waist to steady her, and she laughed into his coat. "I'm fine," she said. "Just a bit icy. C'mon." Nathan grabbed the stack of folders from the truck, never letting go of her with this other hand, and then escorted her up to the door of her room. She dug her keys out of the bag from the hospital and unlocked the flat, walking in ahead of him.

Nathan looked around curiously as he followed her inside. He'd only ever once been inside of her room, in that very first week she'd been in Haven when he'd had to cut her out of a blanket cocoon. It hadn't changed much, apart from a few personal effects that had appeared: her clothes were scattered casually about, there were a few trinkets from local shops on the shelf along with a handful of books she'd bought from Marion Yardley at Faerie Tale Books, and a little silver photo frame with pictures of him and Duke in it. The jacket he'd lent her weeks back was draped over a chair at the little dining table, and his gloves were lying on the stand just inside the door where she dropped her keys.

"I like what you've done with the place," he said.

Audrey chuckled off-handedly as he helped her to the bed. She dropped down onto the edge of the mattress and he could tell she was more tired than she wanted to let on. "Yeah, well, it just doesn't feel right decorating much in a B&B," she said. "They're supposed to be temporary living, you know?"

"Thought about getting a place in town now that you're sticking around a while?" he asked. He grabbed one of the two chairs - the one without his jacket - and brought it back to the side of the bed as she slid herself up to the head of the bed.

"Thought about it," she agreed, tossing her shoes off the bed and tucking her legs beneath the duvet. "Duke offered the flat above the Gull but I'm still waiting on him to clear it out. Not sure if I wanna live above a bar but the rent would definitely be a lot nicer than anywhere else."

Nathan smiled to himself at the thought that she was making plans to stay in Haven more permanently. One of his greatest concerns was that one day she would either find what she was looking for or give up the chase and decide to leave. He didn't want to go back to a Haven without Audrey Parker. Especially not now; now that she had admitted that he was more than just a co-worker to her; now that there was a promise of more to come.

They just needed to get through this case first and then they could properly focus on this burgeoning  _something_  between them.

"Alright, anything else on Costas we can link to the others?"

* * *

Three hours later, Nathan and Audrey were both flipping through the case notes with increasing ferocity, the frustration of no new discoveries settling in as they worked through them for the fourth time. "This is ridiculous," Audrey said, closing Gaven's folder and reaching for Costas'. "We can't seem to link more than two of them at a time."

"Maybe our killer has two motives," Nathan suggested again. "Killing two of them for one motive and the other two for a different."

Since it was the second time he'd offered that explanation, Audrey merely sighed and ran a hand through her hair before tying it back in a hasty ponytail. "It just doesn't make sense," she said irritably. "There's got to be something." She had barely finished the words before an enormous yawn escaped her and she made another noise of annoyance.

"You should rest," he said, putting the papers back into his folder and closing it.

"I'm not going to take a nap, Nathan," she said furiously.

He opened his mouth to argue but was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He gave her a look telling her that they were not done with the conversation before he answered it with a short, "Wuornos."

"Hey, it's Michaels," the rookie cop's tenor came through the speaker. "They told me to call you. Megan Costas is awake and talking. They said you'd wanna question her."

"Great, thanks, Michaels," Nathan said, his heart leaping gratefully. This might be their big break; Megan Costas might be able to help him find the missing link between their victims, or at least give them some idea of a suspect. He ended the call and looked up at Audrey, who was watching him curiously. "The wife's awake," he said, standing up. "I'm going to go see if she has anything for us."

Audrey made to move and he shook his head, pinning her in place with a hand on the shoulder. "No, Parker," he said firmly. "I can do this on my own and you need to rest. Just for a bit, while I'm gone. No arguments."

"Fine but I'm not sleeping," she said, settling back against the pillows with a huff. She dragged the file folders to her and started flipping through them. Nathan just smiled; she could deny it all she wanted, but her eyes were barely half-open. She'd be asleep in no time.

"Call me if anything comes up," he said and then grabbed his coat on his way out the door.

It only took him a matter of minutes to get to the hospital, much closer to this side of town than the Lehrmann house. He stopped at the front desk for directions and made his way up to the ICU, where the sombre receptionist pointed him to the proper room once he'd shown his badge. He knocked gently on the door to the room before stepping in.

Megan Costas was lying in the bed, looking pale and worn. She would've been a pretty woman under normal circumstances, Spanish in origin with soft features and dark curls, but her face was currently speckled with cuts and bruises, and her eyes were drooping from the pain medication being steadily fed into her through an IV in her elbow. There were two teenage boys by her bedside, one of them with a scraped cheek holding a child who couldn't have been more than four on his hip. The other boy had his wrist in a cast and a deep violet bruise on his jawline.

"Excuse me, I don't mean to intrude," Nathan said, stepping inside and pulling his badge from his belt. "Haven PD. I was just wondering if I could ask you a few questions, Mrs Costas."

She nodded weakly and glanced at her sons. "Boys, could you wait outside?" she murmured, her voice quiet and hoarse. "Maybe take Henry down to get a drink."

"M'kay, Mom," the one clutching the little boy said and they all trooped out together, shutting the door behind them.

Nathan approached the side of her bed. "My name's Nathan Wuornos, I'm the detective investigating your accident," he said.

"You're going to find out who did this," she said and a steely look had appeared in her tired grey eyes. "Who killed my husband?"

"I am," Nathan said certainly. Normally, he would never give a victim an affirmation like that, in case they didn't manage to solve it, but there was no chance of that this time. He was going to find this person. They'd gone after Audrey and that made this personal. He wasn't letting this go into the cold case file and he sure as hell wasn't going to let anyone else die. "Ma'am, can you think of anyone, absolutely anyone who may have had something against your husband?"

"No, no one," she said. "Andy was a good man. He made some mistakes when he was younger and he knew that, but he's worked all his life trying to make up for that."

"What kind of mistakes?" Nathan asked, his forehead furrowing. "In high school?"

"Yes, he was - well, he wasn't very nice to some of the other boys," she said. "One or two in particular, I think, but I couldn't tell you who. Teased them, pushed them around, things like that."

"He was a bully," Nathan concluded.

Megan frowned. "I guess you could say it like that," she said. "But he's a good man, Detective. He does everything he can - did. Did everything he can..." She broke off with a sob and dabbed at her watery eyes with her hand. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I know this is a difficult time for you," Nathan said. "Just another question. I'm sure you've heard about the other deaths that have occurred in Haven recently. Did your husband have any connection to Bart Keller, Troy Gaven, or Myles Lehrmann?"

"I mean we know them from around," Megan said thoughtfully. "But we don't really associate with any of them much. Our boys are the same age as Bart and Troy's kids, so we see them at school things every once and a while, but that's probably the extent of it." She shook her head and another sob bubbled out of her. " _Ay Dios mia_ , what kind of monster would do this? Kill so many men, so many  _fathers_? It's hard enough on my older two, they actually knew before I did. But little Henry, he's just three. He's not even old enough to understand. How do I tell him that his papa isn't coming home?"

Nathan glanced through the window set in the wall at the boys, who were standing in a close huddle and talking. The older two had grim sets to their faces, their eyes red and downcast. The youngest simply looked confused, trying to get his brothers to play with him and baffled when they brushed him off. Nathan's eyes lingered again on the angry bruises and scrapes on the older boys' faces. "I didn't realise your boys were in the accident with you," he said, wondering why that hadn't been included in the reports.

"They weren't," Megan Costas said, frowning.

"But the bruises," Nathan said, glancing between the woman and her sons. "I just assumed..."

"Oh, no," Megan said and she rolled her eyes, the familiar look of an exasperated mother settling over her features. "No, they got into a fight at school. Jack always has been too much like his father. Short-tempered. He and a couple of his friends went after another boy. Michael got hit when he stepped in to try and stop it. I'm afraid the other boy got it worse, though."

Nathan's mind jumped back several days, to the moment when Bart Keller's son had answered the door with a black eye and split lip.

_"Cops? Oh c'mon, he's okay, you can't arrest me. It wasn't even my idea. Jack started it."_

_"Whoa, kid, slow down. What are you talking about?"_

_"Wait, you're not here about the fight at school?"_

"This fight," Nathan said. "Did it happen to involve Bart Keller's son as well?"

"Tyler? I think so," she said, her expression morphing into one of intense confusion. "What does that have to do with it?"

"Maybe everything," he replied. "The boy they fought with, do you know his name?"

"No," she said. "I know it's a boy in their year, but I don't know who."

"I need to talk to your son," Nathan said, looking out into the hall. "I need to know that boy's name. Do you mind?"

"Uh, no, go ahead," Megan said.

Nathan didn't pause long enough to give her thanks as he hurried out of the room. He rounded the doorframe to where the Costas boys were waiting to go back into their mother's room. "What was his name?" Nathan asked breathlessly.

"What?" the younger of the two teens asked, rubbing his casted wrist uncertainly.

"The boy you fought with," Nathan clarified. "What was his name?"

"Uh," the boy looked in at his mother, who nodded reassuringly. "Chucky - I mean, Charlie. Charlie O'Donnell."

"O'Donnell," Nathan breathed. "Christ, it was him." He bolted out of the ICU, ignoring the startled shouts of nurses and orderlies that he nearly ran over. Pulling out his phone as he was running, he dialled Audrey's mobile just as he slid into the nearest lift. "C'mon, Parker, answer," he said, bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet as the lift glided downward.

The line clicked just as the lift reached the ground floor and Nathan immediately started talking. "Parker, I think O'Donnell's our guy," he rambled off as he raced across the lobby. "I don't know how, but it was him."

"Good job, Detective Wuornos."

Nathan came to a dead stop in the middle of the hospital lobby, horror pulling him up short like it had thrown a brick wall up in front of him. That voice didn't belong to his partner. No, that was... "O'Donnell."

"So you finally figured it out," Lee O'Donnell drawled over the phone. "I was wondering if you'd get there. See, the thing is, you and your partner are in my way now. It's time to take you two out of the game."

"Where's Audrey?" Nathan growled.

"She's here, with me," O'Donnell said. "Don't worry, she's perfectly safe. For now." The threat hung heavy in the staticky connection between them and closed around Nathan's heart like an iron fist. "That will change if you don't cooperate. Come to my workshop. Alone. If you let anyone know where you've gone, Audrey Parker dies. Understood?"

And then the line went dead.


	15. Hostage Situation

Nathan's hands were shaking as he lowered the phone. His mind was buzzing, racing desperately to process the new information. O'Donnell. It had really been O'Donnell all this time. O'Donnell had murdered all of those men. He had locked Audrey in that cellar. And now he had her.

That thought spurred him into motion and he jammed his phone back into the pocket of his jeans. He sprinted out to his truck, plans forming and falling apart in his head. He wanted to call for help, get the entire strength of the Haven PD and march in to save her, but O'Donnell's warning stopped him. This man had already tried to kill her once and he'd nearly succeeded. He had already proved he was not afraid to take down anyone who stood in his way. Nathan had no doubt that this man would not hesitate to hurt Audrey if he felt threatened.

Which meant that he was going into this alone.

Nathan hesitated before turning on the truck. What if something happened to him? Who would save Audrey if he died? There would be no one to protect her. After a long pause, Nathan took out his mobile and found the number of the one person he could trust to listen to him. To save Audrey.

"Nathan? What's the occasion?" Duke asked drolly but there was an edge of genuine concern beneath his tone.

"I need your help," Nathan said, too worried about Audrey to even hate himself for saying it.

"Audrey?" Duke asked, his voice immediately sobering.

"He's got her," Nathan said. "It's Lee O'Donnell, the metalworker up on Faust."

"So why are you calling me?" Duke asked uncertainly. "Call the cavalry. Go get her, Nathan."

"He said if I don't go alone, he'll kill her," Nathan said. Duke cursed harshly. "That's where I need you. I'm going in but there's a chance I'm not getting out alive. Give me one hour. One hour to get her away from O'Donnell. If you don't hear back from me again within the hour, call the Chief. Tell him everything I said and have him send everyone. Tell them whatever they do, they need to get her out."

"Nate-"

"Promise me, Duke," Nathan demanded. "I'm going to do everything I can but if I don't save her, I need you to do it."

"Okay," Duke said. "Okay. One hour. Just Nate... be careful, yeah?"

"Thank you," Nathan said, ending the call without answering Duke's request. He would try and stay safe, but Audrey was and always would be his first priority. Turning the truck on, he drove out of the hospital car park and toward O'Donnell's shop. Fear and anger battled for dominance inside of him, his grip on the steering wheel white-knuckled.

This was what O'Donnell wanted. He made it personal because he wanted an excuse to get rid of them both. He wanted Nathan to react, to do something rash, so he could kill the both of them. He had to know this was the end, that he had been discovered, and he was going to take them down with him.

As Nathan pulled onto the right street he forced himself to breathe deeply and relax. He needed to be calm and rational to get her out of this. No matter what it came down to, he would get her out of this alive.

He parked in the wide dirt strip that served as a car park in front of the garage. Unholstering his gun, he walked slowly to the man door. He ignored the red "Sorry, We're Closed" sign as he pushed it open and slipped inside.

Nathan's first impression of the metal shop was that it would make a perfect set for a horror film. Sharp, glistening tools hung from the walls and a work table in the middle was covered in hammers and buckets of oil and other patent chemicals. A cavernous furnace stood in the back of the shop, the heady, cloying smell of hot metal and coals in the air.

All of those observations were periphery though as Nathan's eyes were drawn immediately to the centre of the room. Audrey was kneeling on the concrete floor, her hands tied behind her back and her mouth gagged. There was a look of muffled terror beneath her determined expression and a coil of razor wire around her throat. O'Donnell stood behind her, holding the ends of the wire firmly in his hands, and he grinned as Nathan came in.

"Hands in the air," Nathan said, levelling his sidearm with O'Donnell's chest.

"My hands are a bit busy," O'Donnell said. He adjusted his grip slightly and Audrey stifled a whimper as the ragged edges of the wire made minute incisions around her neck. "Arms in the air, though," O'Donnell continued with a smirk, "that I can do."

Nathan watched in awe as O'Donnell lifted his arms slowly. A narrow chasm formed in his wrists, the skin and tendons and bones pulling apart from each other. As O'Donnell raised his arms over his head, his hands remained hovering above Audrey's shoulders. The fingers flexed around the wire, still clearly functional even though they were no longer attached to his body.

"Go ahead, Detective," O'Donnell sneered. "You think you can shoot me before I take her head off? At the very least I'll bet I can cut the artery and her oesophagus. Care to make a bet?" The hands pulled tighter pointedly and Audrey winced as two narrow trails of blood began to roll down her pale throat.

"Okay, stop," Nathan said and lifted his hands in surrender. He set his gun on the ground and nudged it away with his boot.

"Good lad," O'Donnell said sarcastically. His foot separated itself from his ankle and stepped forward as if there was nothing different. It stood on the gun and kicked it toward O'Donnell before going back and attaching itself to the joint.

"That's how you did it," Nathan concluded, not taking his eyes off the hands that clutched Audrey's life. "How you killed all of those men from a distance. By taking off your hands."

"It's a handy little skill, no pun intended," O'Donnell said. "A perfect alibi, really. 'I couldn't have done it, officer. I was with you the whole time.'"

"How did you do that?" Nathan asked. "Lehrmann. Audrey and I were there with you. You couldn't have killed him in that minute you were gone to check on your son."

"Amazing how no one questions a hand in the pocket," O'Donnell said. "I only needed one hand to kill Myles Lehrmann. A fistful of cyanide to take care of those yappy dogs and dose his cup of morning coffee. Meanwhile, I build a watertight alibi with you by keeping my wrist in my pocket where you didn't see, don't even think to look."

"Where did you even get cyanide?" Nathan asked curiously. "That's not an easy thing to get ahold of."

O'Donnell grinned. "Not a lot of people know that a common tool in metalwork is potassium cyanide," he said. "Crystalised cyanide, used in electroplating metals. It's perfectly safe until it mixes with the stomach acid and then it becomes immediately toxic."

"So he wouldn't have noticed it until it was already too late. Clever," Nathan said.

O'Donnell laughed. "Trying to play to my ego, Detective Wuornos?" he said. "Nice try, but I'm not falling for that old trick. Or should we test just how quick my reflexes are?"

"Okay," Nathan said, making an appeasing gesture as Audrey cringed. God, he wished he had her help; she was so much better at talking to the Troubled than he was, she would know how to reason with him. "Okay, I get it, you're in charge," he said. "Just - just don't hurt her."

"You got your cuffs," O'Donnell said. "That pole there, cuff yourself to it. Through that hole in the middle. I wanna make sure you're not going to try and pull anything."

Nathan nodded and grabbed the cuffs from his belt. Making sure to keep his hands visible the whole time, he walked over to the enormous steel beam that supported the roof nearest him. He closed the cuff around one wrist and then threaded the other side through the oval hole in the centre of the beam. With a grimace, he closed the ring around his other wrist. "There, now let her go," he said.

"What do you say, Officer Parker?" O'Donnell said and leaned in closer to her, reattaching his hands in the process. "Since he's been such a good boy." He loosened the razorwire from around Audrey's neck, making her wince as the corners of the blades snagged in her skin, and then unwrapped it and tossed it aside. The moment it was gone she visibly slouched.

"C'mon now." He grabbed her upper arm and pulled her to her feet, dragging her toward Nathan. He grabbed a thick, industrial strength zip-tie from a table as he passed, and when he reached the beam where Nathan was tied, he shoved her against it. Audrey staggered and slumped against it, clearly unstable on her legs. O'Donnell pulled a knife from his belt and split the tie around her wrists.

A glint of steel in her eyes, Audrey threw her elbow back and caught O'Donnell in the chest. She pivoted to attack again but O'Donnell punched her in the jaw and she fell backwards with a cry, muffled through the thick cloth tied around her mouth. "Parker!" Nathan said in alarm. She immediately glanced at him, her eyes watering over the reddening bruise on her cheek.

"Now _behave_ ," O'Donnell snarled, jerking Audrey up by the arm again and forcing her face first against the beam. Holding her in place with his own body, he brought her hands together at the centre hole and fastened them with the zip-tie with a quick movement. He sneered and pulled it tight enough that it bit her skin and she kicked back at him in retaliation. "Don't make me," O'Donnell threatened, lifting a hand in preparation to hit her.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's not nice to hit a girl?" Nathan said darkly. "Although your moral compass obviously doesn't point due north."

"And yours does, Officer Wuornos?" O'Donnell taunted, lifting an eyebrow sceptically. "This is a small town, I've heard the stories."

"I haven't killed four people," Nathan said. "Four counts of murder, one attempted murder, and two counts of detaining an officer of the law."

"And what about them?!" O'Donnell spat furiously, wheeling on Nathan. "Who is going to punish them? Who was going to make them pay for what they did?"

"What did they do?" Nathan asked. "What could those men have done to deserve getting murdered? Is this about your son and the fight he was involved in?"

"Fight? Is that what they called it?" O'Donnell said. "It wasn't a fight. Those boys have been bullying Charlie for years, and they finally decided that wasn't enough. They jumped him. Beat him, all three of them, in front of the whole school. Broke two ribs and a collarbone, left him screaming on the pavement." He dragged a hand through his hair, pacing in front of Nathan and Audrey, and let out a hysterical laugh. "That's when I knew; when I realised that none of them had changed. They were still cruel, evil men who had passed on their cruelty to their children."

"You killed the fathers because their sons picked a fight with your boy," Nathan concluded.

"I killed them because they made my life hell," O'Donnell bellowed. "Because I spent my entire childhood being afraid of going to school, afraid to go out in public. Because everywhere I went, they tortured me. They bullied and beat me and no one would do anything about it."

Nathan let out a heavy breath of realisation. "Because Bart Keller was Haven's big hockey star."

"So of course, he and his friends could never do anything wrong," the welder continued. "And not even the adults would cross Myles Lehrmann, the town criminal. And Costas, the son of the city prosecutor."

"But why now?" Nathan asked. "You've lived through the Troubles before."

"Didn't happen last time," O'Donnell said. "I wasn't even in Haven last time the Troubles happened. I'd just dropped out of school, I was sixteen and I couldn't take it anymore. So I bolted up to Augusta, got a job working in a metal shop there. That's where I met Tina. I was the happiest I'd ever been. We stayed there for years, got married. Still be there if my pop didn't die. I inherited the house and shop, and I couldn't bear to sell it. So Tina and I moved to Haven, but the Troubles were long gone by then."

"So what triggered-" Nathan paused and breathed out the realisation. "Your son. Of course. When your son got hurt, that's what triggered your Trouble."

"My father had always told me what we could do," O'Donnell said. "That we could separate ourselves. I never really understood what that meant. When they called me about Charlie, it felt like my whole world was falling apart. I just wanted to crumble to pieces. And then my hands dropped right off. I knew then it was a gift. A chance to finally have the upper hand on those who'd hurt me. Who hurt Charlie."

Nathan's eyes went wide at the implication. "No, you can't. They're just kids."

"Kids? They put my son in the hospital!" O'Donnell exclaimed. "They aren't kids, they're monsters. They learned cruelty from their fathers and I need to stop them before they teach it to anyone else."

"They're children," Nathan insisted. "They can learn. It's not too late for them yet. Please, you can't do this."

"I can and I will," O'Donnell said. "And you won't be able to stop me. Not after you and Detective Parker tragically die when my shop explodes. Faulty wiring and a gas leak in the furnace, you know how these old buildings are." He walked over and inspected the furnace appraisingly. "Meanwhile, I take care of those three monsters, and before the police have even identified your charred corpses, Charlie and I will be long gone."

O'Donnell crossed the room to Nathan, twisting a grease-stained rag between his hands. "Now that's enough talk from you, Officer Wuornos. I've got an accident to rig." He looped the cloth around Nathan's head, forcing it between his teeth and knotting it firmly in the back. "It's nice. Since you can't feel it I can tie this as tight as I want. Which reminds me," he checked the cuffs around Nathan's wrists, clicking them twice more so they were snug against his skin. "There." With a mocking slap to the cheek, O'Donnell went back to the furnace.

The moment O'Donnell's back was turned, Nathan's attention went to his cuffed wrists. This was their last hope for escape and he had to be careful or O'Donnell would blow the whole place. The cuff was slightly looser around his left wrist - less muscle to fill it out - and he could probably get his hand free but he needed cover. The sound of his cuffs clinking against the beam might make O'Donnell suspicious.

Nathan looked up at Audrey and was surprised to meet her gaze, a look of expectant determination in her eyes. She knew he had a plan and she was waiting for directions. Nathan would have smiled if he could move his facial muscles around the gag. Pointing at her, Nathan moved his hands to show struggling, then pointed to his ear. Audrey didn't even question, immediately trying to free her hands with overdramatic huffs of frustration.

"Try all you like, Officer Parker, you're not getting out," O'Donnell said without turning, still alternating between stoking the fire and tinkering with wires.

Nathan grinned internally; exactly what he'd hoped for. While Audrey continued her mock battle with the zip-tie, he folded his left thumb into his palm. Taking the centre chain in his right hand for leverage, Nathan pulled against the cuff. He watched the skin around the edges go bright red and his hand bones shift, but the metal wouldn't pass over his thumb joint.

Gritting his teeth, Nathan planted his feet against the beam and leant all of his weight back away from the cuffs. His hand had changed from red to violet and his entire body weight strained against the metal. He was just losing hope, thinking maybe he should find a way to slick his skin under the cuff for lubrication when it happened; his thumb emitted a dull, crunching sound. Audrey winced on his behalf but Nathan was triumphant as he pressed his mangled thumb tighter against his palm and finally manoeuvred his hand free.

Without hesitating a moment more, Nathan scurried over and picked up the knife O'Donnell had dropped when Audrey elbowed him. He carefully wedged the tip of the blade into the gap between her thumbs and sawed the tie in two. The moment it was gone Audrey tried to reach for his left hand - which wasn't cooperating very well anymore - but he handed her the knife and pushed her toward the door.

Nathan had only taken three steps toward O'Donnell when the older man turned. Launching into action, Nathan threw himself forward and tackled O'Donnell to the ground. Using the cuffs still dangling from his right hand as a garrote, Nathan pinned the other man's neck to the floor, cutting off his air supply. His face reddening, O'Donnell worked his hands free and closed them around Nathan's throat.

The world instantly went fuzzy around the edges. The gag in his mouth was impeding his breathing even more and he could feel the strain of his lungs trying to sustain on the little oxygen getting through. It took less than thirty seconds for his grip to relax and he keeled to the side. O'Donnell's hands came with, even though the man remained laying on the floor. Nathan clawed frantically with his right hand, not knowing if he was scratching O'Donnell's hands or his own throat, just desperate to get some air.

"Hey!" Audrey's voice broke through the sound of his gasping and Nathan tilted his head. In the middle of the haze of black in his vision, he could see her standing in the middle of the doorway, the knife in one hand and that haughty smirk she wore when she'd bested someone. And as much as he wanted her far away from his place and this psychotic killer, he couldn't stop the hope that swelled in him.

And then the darkness swept up and washed him away.


	16. Falling Away

Audrey straightened her posture at the entrance to the shop, trying not to show just how tired she was even as one had clung to the doorframe for support. Her every muscle ached and screamed but she couldn't just leave. Not without Nathan. He might get mad at her later but she was done with his being noble. She wasn't so weak that she couldn't help.

Using the knife, she cut the gag away from her face and turned back to the men. Nathan was laying on his back, O'Donnell's disembodied hands around his throat and his face reddening, and the welder was on his back beside him taking great, gasping breaths. Audrey tightened her grip on the handle of the knife. "Hey!"

Both men turned their heads to glance at her. She saw a spark of light in Nathan's but it was the anger in O'Donnell's that concerned her. Beneath that anger was something more; Fear.

And just like that, she knew his weakness.

"You know why those men beat you up, Lee?" she jeered, grinning and rocking her weight onto one hip confidently. "It's because you're a pussy. I mean really? I saw those pictures of you from school. Who would be afraid of the little ginger guy? I'd have beat you up too."

"You're afraid of me," O'Donnell said, rocketing to his feet and pointing at her accusingly.

"No, you know what I was afraid of? That you'd cock this all up and kill me on accident," she said. "I felt your hands shaking. You're the one who's afraid. That's why you had to kill all those men from a distance, isn't it? Because you're too much of a coward to kill them face-to-face."

O'Donnell's face purpled. "Don't call me a coward!"

"But you are," Audrey continued, baiting him. "You were too afraid to stand up to those bullies all those years ago, so you ran to the grown-ups and hoped they'd fix it for you. You were too scared to stand up for yourself and you're too scared to protect your son."

"I killed for my son!" O'Donnell screamed. His muscles were clenched tight, veins and tendons pushing against his skin, and that's when she saw it: a fleshy chasm had started in the curve of his elbow, growing as his face darkened. He was losing control.

"No," Audrey countered tauntingly, raising her voice to match him. "No, you killed for yourself. Instead of manning up and facing those men like an equal, you stayed that whining, weak little boy desperately looking for some way out. Some cop out where you don't have to be a man. I mean, even with me, you couldn't do a thing. You let nature try and kill me, and then you kidnapped me with chloroform while I was taking a nap. I mean, come _on_. Those aren't the actions of a man. Because you're not. You were a coward as a kid, and you're still a coward now."

" _Stop it_!"

Audrey smirked. "And that's why you're going to lose. Because you don't even have to balls to fight. You're going to lose, go to prison, and I'm going to make sure they take your son somewhere far, far away from here where you'll never see him again."

O'Donnell let out a bellow like an angry animal and then, all at once like every joint in his body had been simultaneously removed, he fell apart at the seams.

It only took Audrey a split second to recover from her shock. She stumbled to Nathan's side, her heart racing as she realised he wasn't moving. She brushed away the bits of finger that hadn't rolled off his throat yet and checked his breathing. It was shallow enough to be frightening, but still there. Audrey used the knife to cut away the sickeningly tight gag and then picked up his misshaped left hand to examine it.

Nathan jerked it away with a pained shout, the shock waking him up immediately. "Ugh, Parker, don' touch," he mumbled, his voice hoarse as it strained against his bruised vocal cords.

"Oh God, Nathan, I'm sorry," she stammered, drawing her hands back frantically. "I forgot."

Nathan half-propped himself up, looking anxious. "O'Donnell?"

"He's gone," she assured him. "He - fell apart."

His eyes landed on the heap of body parts trapped in the clothing and a flash of surprise and disgust crossed his face. "Yes, he did," he agreed distractedly. "Did you-"

"Almost everyone's Troubles are linked to their emotions," she explained. "So I made him emotional. It worked a bit more than I was expecting. I just wanted to make him let you go. I didn't... I think he's dead."

"C'mon, let's get out of here," Nathan said. "He said he'd rig this place to blow and I don't wanna be here if it does." They supported each other out of the workshop and back to where the Bronco was parked. Once they had both clambered inside, Nathan dug his phone out of his pocket and dialled the Chief's direct number. Audrey slumped back in her seat as she listened to her partner give a complete run-down of the situation to the Chief, too tired to even be stubborn about it. When he hung up with a weary sigh, Audrey reached across and patted his right hand where it had fallen on the bench between them.

"Chief's on his way," Nathan said simply. "Told us to wait so we can give him statements."

"Joy," Audrey said sarcastically and the corners of Nathan's bruised lips quirked. Her eyes travelled from the bruising on his face down to the violet splotches blossoming around his neck. "God, he did a number on you."

"Can't feel it," Nathan said with a shrug, glancing idly at his swollen and misshapen left thumb. "You shouldn't have come back for me," he added. Audrey had just opened her mouth to argue when he turned his head and met her gaze, his blue eyes open and soft. "But thank you for doing it."

"Thank you, too," she said. "Not everybody would mangle their hand for their partner."

Nathan's playful smile smoothed into something sweeter. "Maybe not," he agreed. "But you're not just my partner. Right?"

And despite the crushing weight and pain of the day, despite the horrible situation they had just experienced, Audrey felt something inside of her warm and grow. "Absolutely not just partners," she said. She straightened up and reached for the first aid kit beneath the bench seat. "Now, More Than Partner, let me see that hand."

"I'd rather not," he said with a frown, cradling his broken hand far away from her. "It doesn't hurt right now."

Audrey pulled a pair of latex gloves from inside the box and nodded. "I thought of that," she said, tugging one of the gloves on.

"Really, Parker, it's fine," he said dismissively.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, pulling on the second glove and then holding out her hand expectantly. "I heard that crack. You dislocated your thumb at the very least, if you didn't completely break it. At least let me splint it so you don't break anything that can't be fixed."

Nathan let out a put-upon sigh but finally set his hand on her gloved palm. Audrey grinned triumphantly as she dug a small splint and bandage wrap from inside the case. They were quiet as she worked, Audrey concentrating on aligning the joint properly and not letting her skin brush his.

"There," she said, tying it off with a flourish. "That should hold until we can get to a hospital." She lifted her head and was surprised to find Nathan's face mere centimetres from hers, his breath warm on her cheek.

"I wanna kiss you," he admitted uncertainly, a blush colouring his cheeks and ears.

Audrey felt her heart leap excitedly but then her eyes ghosted over the bruises the too-tight gag had left around his mouth. "It'd hurt," she pointed out. "A lot."

Nathan fixed her with his signature slanted smirk. "It'd be worth it."

Audrey laughed and was just considering giving in when the crunch of gravel beneath tires made them both look back. The Chief's patrol car pulled up into the wide drive beside the Bronco. Nathan groaned in annoyance, which only made Audrey laugh again. "You called him," she reminded him.

"I wasn't expecting him to have such horrible timing," Nathan answered. "Should've, though."

Audrey and Nathan jumped out of the truck and walked over to where the Chief was pulling himself up out of the patrol car. "You two alright?" the Chief asked, eyeing them both up and down.

"Yeah," Audrey said. "We're fine. O'Donnell isn't, though."

"So I heard," the Chief said, pulling out a piece of nicotine gum and popping it into his mouth. "Fell apart, huh? That's a new one."

"How are we going to spin this one?" Nathan asked. "We need something to tell his son. And we still need to give those families some closure."

"We'll figure something out," the Chief said, waving a hand dismissively. "What happened to your hand?"

"Dislocated thumb," Nathan said and shrugged. "Had to get out of a pair of cuffs."

"Why were you in cuffs in the first place?" the Chief asked with an arched eyebrow.

"Because it was put on cuffs or let him take off Audrey's head," Nathan said, a bit more sharply.

The Chief's eyes lingered on the narrow cuts around Audrey's neck and gnawed on his nicotine gum loudly. "Okay," he said simply. They were interrupted by the arrival of a large white van driving up behind them. It stopped beside the patrol car and an enormous man with a head like an Easter Island statue and a long blonde ponytail climbed out.

"Who's that?" Nathan asked suspiciously as the man opened up the back of his van and started going through his things.

"He helps me out with things like this," the Chief said. "It's nothing to worry yourself about. You two get yourselves to the hospital and get cleaned up. Dwight and I can handle it from here."

"This is our case," Nathan protested and Audrey felt inclined to agree with him. It was bad enough that hiding so many secrets and lying on police reports was part of the job, but it was worse being left out of the loop. "We should be involved in this."

"I'll catch you up when you come into the station tomorrow morning," the Chief said firmly.

Nathan grunted in a gesture very similar to his father. "Why are you so keen to get us out of here now?"

"Jesus, Nathan, why do you always have to make everything difficult?" the Chief grumbled. "Look, fine, you wanna know? We've gotta stage this accident and get rid of O'Donnell's body, and I thought you might not wanna be here for that. So would you just not fight me for once?"

"Accident?" Audrey asked, her interest immediately piqued.

"Well we can't tell people that he fell apart, can we?" the Chief pointed out.

"We'll make it look like a shop accident," the huge blonde man said, stepping up next to the Chief. "Like you told the Chief, faulty wiring in an old furnace. A fire will give enough reason for there not to be a body."

"There, see," the Chief said with a vague gesture. "Taken care of. We'll tell the families that it was O'Donnell who killed their husbands and then he killed himself in a shop fire. Problem solved."

"What about his son?" Audrey asked uneasily.

"We'll find somewhere safe to send him," the Chief said. "Don't you worry about that."

Audrey nodded. "Sounds good to me but I want to help with that," she said. "I don't want him to go into the system. The kid's had it hard enough."

"Fair enough," the Chief said. "Alright, Nathan, you satisfied now or you wanna continue interrogating me?"

Nathan looked for a moment like he might argue but Audrey slipped her hand into his and the fight left him. "Right," he said tersely. "C'mon, Parker, let's get you to the hospital and get those cuts looked at." He turned and opened the door for her, helping her up into the passenger seat before walking around to climb in on his side.

"Since when has your dad had someone to help him clean up after the Troubles?" Audrey asked once he'd turned the engine on and was pulling out onto the road. In the rearview mirror, she could see the Chief and the blonde giant heading into the workshop, hefting a toolbox and crate.

"Who knows?" Nathan said darkly. "He's got so many secrets, I never know what he'll do next. Explains how he manages to disguise Troubled deaths so well, though. I didn't think he was clever enough."

Audrey rolled her eyes at the barb. "What a job," she said and shook her head. "Coming up with covers and explaining away the Troubles. Wonder if he works with the Teagues as well to keep stories straight?"

"Wouldn't surprise me," Nathan said. "They're hardly the most forthcoming. Sounds like a good match."

They had just reached the end of the street when flames appeared on the front of the workshop, steadily crawling up the wooden building.

* * *

As per usual in a small town like Haven, the story behind the murders spread like wildfire. By the end of the week, everyone had heard about how Lee O'Donnell had snapped and gone crazy, killing four men who had bullied him in school before locking himself in his workshop and burning it down. The day after the closed casket funeral, fifteen-year-old Charlie O'Donnell had packed up and been moved across the country to live with his maternal grandmother in Arizona.

Nathan folded up the copy of the Haven Herald he'd been perusing and set it down on his desk. It was Friday and the first day they'd not run a story about the murders. In no time at all, the whole ordeal would fade to the back of the town's collective mind. The people of Haven had always been particularly gifted at forgetting the bad things.

Sighing, Nathan leant back in his chair and looked across the office to the vacant desk where Audrey would normally be sitting. She had personally escorted Charlie O'Donnell to his grandmother's house so she had been gone for most of the week. They had spoken briefly on the phone a few times but when it came down to it, he missed her. Especially since they had finally been on the verge of something more in their relationship.

When she got back, they would make that step. He would be sure of it.

With nothing better to do for the day, Nathan settled himself in to finish up the stack of paperwork that had accumulated on his desk. It was awkward to handle the papers with his left hand - he had broken his thumb getting it out of the cuff so it was trapped in a bulky cast on doctor's orders. That had been the worst of his injuries, and the bruises around his wrists and across his face had faded from black to faint yellow-brown. Looking at them over the last week had made him feel somewhat grateful that he couldn't feel them, though.

The mobile in his pocket vibrated and he hastily dug it out, recognising the ringtone. "Hey, Parker," he said when he answered, not able to stop the small smile that formed on his lips.

"Hi, Nathan," Audrey replied, weary but cheerful. "How are things back home?"

"Good, finally starting to settle down," he said. Something inside of him swelled when he realised that she referred to Haven as home now. "You missed the Christmas parade this morning, though."

"Shame," she said with a soft chuckle. "Guess I'll have to catch it next year. I've just dropped Charlie off and we're getting him all settled in at his grandmother's. She's a really nice lady."

"You going to be on your way back soon?" Nathan asked, trying not to sound too eager.

He could actually hear her smile through the phone. "I've got a plane out around eight a.m. tomorrow morning," she said. "I should land in Bangor by two at the latest, so I'll probably be back in Haven by four-ish."

"Just in time for the Winter Ball," Nathan teased.

"Yeah?" Audrey asked. "I've never been to a ball before."

"Well we're technically supposed to work it, so if you're in town then I expect you'll have to put in an appearance. Maybe we can grab a dance," he said, his heart thumping loudly. Was he really flirting about a dance with her? God, was this even considered flirting? He didn't know how to flirt...

Audrey laughed lightly as though she could hear his panicked internal monologue. "Sounds like a plan," she said.

The radio on his desk suddenly crackled, making Nathan jump. "Nathan, honey, you there?" Laverne asked.

"Uh-oh, duty calls," Audrey said, chuckling. "All right, I'll see you tomorrow then. Bye, Nathan."

"Bye, Parker," he said. "See you tomorrow." He reluctantly hung up the phone and then picked up the radio. "Go ahead, Laverne." Even while the elderly dispatcher explained the situation he was supposed to handle, he couldn't keep his mind off the next night or the partner he couldn't wait to see again.


	17. Epilogue

Nathan stood in front of the mirror, fidgeting with his tie and desperately trying to make it lie flat. The stupid thing had a crease in it and he couldn't find his clothes iron to save his life. Finally, he gave up with a huff and tossed the tie onto the floor in the closet. He'd have to make due without. He had never been fond of ties anyway.

Reaching instead for the black vest he'd laid out on the bed, he pulled it on and buttoned it awkwardly with his casted hand. Once the buttons had finally been put in place, he smoothed down the fabric and looked in the mirror. Much better. It was a bit of a change from his usual tee-shirts, but the white shirtsleeves and black vest looked good with his dark jeans, and they served the dual purpose of looking classy as well as being functional.

After all, pseudo-date or no, he was still on duty.

He clipped his holster onto his belt, tucked his phone and wallet into his pockets, and then headed for the front door.

Meanwhile, in her room at the Bed & Breakfast, Audrey was trying to coax her stubborn hair into an elegant twist. It seemed to be extra curly today and she was having difficulties pinning all of the loose strands into place. When she finally surrendered there were still several stray curls hanging around her ears but they were few enough she could pretend it was intentional.

She walked over to the closet where her dress for the evening was hanging from the hook inside of the door. She had spotted it in a window in downtown Phoenix on her way to her hotel room and she hadn't been able to resist buying it. It was knee-length and a beautiful, deep sapphire, with just enough sequined patterning to make it shimmer without looking like it belonged at a high school prom. It only had one sleeve, a strip of ruffled blue fabric that draped over the left shoulder while the other stayed bare.

Dropping the towel she'd been wrapped in onto the bed, Audrey stepped into the dress and zipped it up. Immediately she turned and went back into the bathroom, checking how it looked in the mirror. It fell perfectly around her curves, the asymmetrical skirt complimenting her legs, and she felt a flush of pleasure.

Now she just needed to do something about all the bruises and cuts. The brown rings around her wrists and the bruise on her cheekbone were easy enough to hide with a bit of foundation, but she didn't want to risk getting make-up into the cuts that the razor wire had left on her neck. The last thing she needed was to get an infection there. Thankfully, she had found the perfect cover in a shop at the airport.

Rummaging through her suitcase, which she hadn't had time to unpack yet, she pulled out the black, lace choker with a silver snowflake pendant hanging from the bottom. She fastened it around her neck, just loose enough that it wouldn't irritate the scratches, and smoothed the lace against her throat. It covered the majority of the cuts without looking too conspicuous.

Audrey nodded in satisfaction and then hurried to finish her make-up. Nathan would be arriving to pick her up any minute now and she didn't want to leave him waiting too long.

They'd both been waiting long enough for this night.

She had just finished applying her lipstick when there was a knock at her door. "Just a minute," she called, tossing the lipstick into her clutch purse and then stepping into her black heeled ankle-length boots. As a last touch, she slipped her smaller sidearm into the holster on her thigh and tucked her badge and keys into the purse. Finally, she put on her coat and opened the door.

Nathan was standing on the porch, his coat opened to reveal white shirtsleeves and a black vest that showed off the slim, v-shape of his torso. He looked fantastic. His eyes panned her up and down, and a soft grin took over his face. "You look - great," he said, his voice cracking slightly and making him clear his throat embarrassedly.

"So do you," Audrey replied with a smile.

She couldn't tell if the pink on Nathan's ears and cheeks was from the cold or the compliment. "So, shall we?" he asked, gesturing back at the Bronco. "We're supposed to be there by seven to run security before the crowds start showing up."

"Yeah, of course," she said, closing up her room behind her. When she turned around it was to see Nathan offering an arm to her and she smiled as she linked her arm through his. He led her to the passenger side of the Bronco, steadying her over the icy patches, and then jogged around to his side. The moment he had turned on the ignition, he immediately reached over and cranked up the heaters for her.

"How was your flight?" he asked as he backed out of the car park.

"Long," Audrey said with an exasperated sigh. "I was stuck in the window seat next to this passive-aggressive couple that were in the middle of some serious marital problems. It was a nightmare. I have never been more glad to get off a plane in my life, and I've been on some rough flights."

"You didn't have to go, you know," Nathan pointed out.

"I know, but I felt like I owed it to him," she said with a self-conscious shrug. "After all, I'm the reason his father's gone."

"It wasn't your fault, Parker," he said sympathetically. "You didn't know it would happen. You did what you had to do." Audrey shrugged but didn't respond. Halfway down the block, Nathan reached across the bench and squeezed her hand gently. His long fingers were warm and comforting around hers, but the fleeting grip lasted too short for her.

"Oh, that reminds me," he said, reaching into the pocket of his coat. He pulled out a small, carefully wrapped present and handed it across to her. "Early Christmas present," he said, by way of explanation.

Audrey smiled and slit the tape, peeling away the blue and silver wrapping paper. Inside was a pair of sleek, black leather gloves. The insides were fur-lined, soft as silk, and there was a small, flourished, "A," stitched into the wrists in thin, silver thread. "Nathan, these are gorgeous," she said, pulling them on experimentally. They fit like a second skin and immediately her hands felt so much warmer.

Nathan glanced across at her and smiled. "Told you, gloves are a good idea here," he reminded her.

She chuckled and flexed her hands inside the soft leather. "Well these are amazing," she said. "Thank you." She leant across and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before settling back into her seat. She didn't miss the bright smile that shot across Nathan's face before he managed to hide it.

Nathan pulled the truck into the car park outside of the Haven Convention Centre - which was really nothing more than an old, spacious barn that had been converted to an open building for when Haven needed the space - and killed the engine. There was already a line of other cars there, some patrol cars and some large vans marked with local caterers and decorators. At the far end, Audrey could pick out the Teagues ancient van next to the Chief's black and white cruiser.

"So what should I be expecting?" Audrey asked as Nathan helped her down out of the Bronco. "Cheesy and flashy like a high school prom or classy and snooty like a high-class party?"

"Neither," Nathan said and then paused. "Or maybe more like both. It's not so bad. Why don't you just wait and see?" He opened the door beneath the banner that read "67th Annual Haven Winter Ball" and then gestured her in ahead of him. The entrance room was nothing more than a foyer with a coat room, and Nathan helped her get her coat off and hung it up in the row full of police coats. Once they were both out of their winter wear, he placed a hand on the small of her back and steered her out into the main room.

It reminded Audrey a bit of a junior prom, but the classiest junior prom she'd ever seen. All of the walls and doorframes were draped in varying shades of blue, from pale chiffon to velvet navy curtains. Rows of white and silver tables lined either side of the open dance floor, glittering candles set inside glass globes as centrepieces. Icicles and enormous snowflakes hung from the cross beams in the ceiling, the blue and white light bulbs casting shimmery, sparkling dots of light dancing around the room. In front of the raised platform for the DJ was an ice statue of two figure skaters in an embrace on a tiny frozen pond, edged by fluffy heaps of fake snow.

"Wow," Audrey breathed, turning slowly on the spot to take in the full effect. It was not quite the winter wonderland that the tree lighting had been, but she imagined it was as close as could be achieved inside. "This is kind of - beautiful."

"Yeah, the Goddards usually do a pretty good job," Nathan agreed casually, his hand hovering at the spot where the back of her dress dipped to its lowest point, fingertips just brushing her skin. "Last year was a Santa's Workshop theme, much cheesier. This is nice."

"You two," the Chief wandered over from the corner where he'd been standing. Audrey's eyes widened when she saw him in a white dress shirt, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and black pressed slacks.

"Looking nice, Chief," she said with a grin.

The Chief gave her a look but he smiled ever so faintly - or at least frowned a little less. "You don't look half bad yourself," he said. "I've already got the patrol boys working the doors and outside, so you two get inside. Keep everyone under control." He put a piece of nicotine gum in his mouth before adding, "Oh, and for God's sake, keep Dave Teagues away from the eggnog. We don't wanna repeat last year."

"Is he really that bad?" Audrey asked as the Chief walked off across the dance floor.

Nathan chuckled and nodded. "Has a bit of an exhibitionist streak," he said, his expression torn between amusement and disgust. "After a couple glasses last year he, well - it got weird."

"So we get to keep track of everyone in here, then?" she asked, glancing around as the first few people started to filter into the room. The DJ turned on a slow Christmas instrumental and the caterers were bustling around the edges of the room, laying out trays and filling drinks at the long tables along the walls.

"Which means we basically have the night off," Nathan translated. "We just have to stick around here in case something happens."

"We're free to do as we like then?" Audrey asked and she felt eagerness building in her.

It had been days since they had finally admitted that they had feelings for each other and they hadn't been able to do anything more about it. She had been thinking about little else for the last week as she'd been travelling with Charlie O'Donnell to Arizona. It seemed surreal that after so long of denying and fighting against the feelings, she had actually just been able to come right out and say it.

Well, at least she'd been able to say that she was glad he felt something for her. That was close enough for now.

Nathan glanced down at her, his lips twisting up on one side. "Yeah, suppose we are."

"In that case," Audrey said and she looked out at the handful of couples that were spiralling across the dance floor, "wanna take a spin?"

Nathan's eyes widened in panic and he shifted awkwardly. "I don't - I mean, I'm not very good at - "

Audrey chuckled. "And you think I know how to dance?" she asked sarcastically. "C'mon, you can't be that bad."

"I can't feel my feet," he pointed out even as she took his hand and dragged him out onto the dance floor.

"In these heels, neither can I," Audrey joked and he smiled indulgently. He placed his hand on the small of her back, his fingers dipping beneath the fabric so he could feel his hand on her skin. Then he took her other hand and held it up between them. "Ready?" she asked with a teasing smile.

In response, Nathan took the smallest of steps forward, his weight propelling her along with him. In her heels, she was tall enough that she didn't have to crane her neck to see him. There was a pleasant flush on his cheeks as they waltzed in a little square among the other couples.

"I missed you," he admitted softly, drawing her a half step closer to his body. "This week, while you were gone."

"Me too," Audrey said. She weaved their fingers together, the heel of her hand resting against the white cast around his wrist and thumb. "I didn't want to go, really, but I had to know he was settled in and safe."

"I know," he said. "You care so much, about everyone. It's one of those things I love about you."

Audrey felt the heat crawl up her neck and she smiled as she leant her head against his chest. "You really think we can do this?" she asked timidly. "Still work and solve cases and be us. Like, together."

"I think it's sure as hell worth trying," he said. He stopped them mid-step and tucked a hand beneath her chin, tilting her head up to face him. His storm eyes were bright and sincere as he smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I wanna be with you, Parker. I have for a long time. And if you wanna try, I do too."

Warmth and comfort welled up inside of Audrey and she felt for a moment like she might cry from pure joy. She had never felt so loved. Her throat was thick, too full of emotion to speak, so she answered him in the only way she could.

Standing up on her toes, Audrey placed a hand on either side of his face and kissed him soundly. He froze for only a split second before he melted into the kiss, his lips warm and firm against hers. He cupped the back of her neck in one hand while the other pressed into the small of her back, curving her body up against his. Audrey couldn't stop herself from moaning slightly into his mouth as they fought a steady push-and-pull of lips.

When they finally broke apart they were both breathless and flushed. Audrey dropped back down to her heels and Nathan settled his cheek on the top of her head as she nuzzled into his chest. There was nothing that could shake the smile that had taken place on her lips and Audrey let herself drink in the comfort of Nathan's arms.

"One hell of a first kiss, Parker," he said with a gentle laugh.

She looked up at him, a mischievous grin playing across her lips. "You just wait 'til the second one."


End file.
